The Life and Afterlife of Swedish Biograph

Jan Olsson is professor emeritus of cinema studies at Stockholm University. The author of Hitchcock a la Carte and the founding editor of Aura: Film Studies Journal, he has published widely on multiple aspects of film and media studies.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Concepts and Considerations: An Introduction 1 Business and Economics 2 Starting Up the LidingOE Studio 3 Novel Production Practices: 1913 4 Productions and Alliances: 1914-1916 5 Conceptual Indicators of Changes in Film Style 6 From "Nonsense to Film Art: Historiographic Negotiations 7 Critical Recognition and Commercial Misgivings: Responses from Key Markets 8 Crossroads: From LidingOE to Berlin via Dalecarlia and London 9 Archival Practices: From the Swedish Film Society and First-Generation Scholarship to the Swedish Film Institute Conclusion Appendix 1. Intertitles and Other Indications of Temporal Shifts Between Reels in Films from 1912 to 1916 Appendix 2. Svensk Filmindustri's Educational Department Catalogs Appendix 3. Directors at the SB Studio (Apart from SjOEstrOEm and Stiller) Notes Selected Bibliography Index

"Olsson is the perfect man for the job of illuminating the many lives of the films produced by Svenska Bio in the early 1910s, and putting early Swedish cinema back on the map of early film history internationally. . . . The Life and Afterlife of Swedish Biograph is rich and rewarding."--Scandinavian Studies "Offers a rich exploration of both business and economics, film production practices, changes in film style, and commercial misgivings, to quote some of the chapter headings. The book is written with exquisite prose and is a pure pleasure to read."--Nordicom Review "Recovers and explores a canonical period of silent-era Swedish film history that has previously been woefully neglected. Jan Olsson does a magisterial job of contextualizing and triangulating lost materials and treasures through deep research and analysis. An invaluable contribution."--Arne Lunde, author of Nordic Exposures: Scandinavian Identities in Classical Hollywood Cinema "Fusing together archival digging, business history, film politics, and film and cultural analysis, Jan Olsson offers a rich exploration of how Sweden's Golden Age of silent cinema came to be. Anyone with an interest in film history will want to read The Life and Afterlife of Swedish Biograph, the first full-length work of English-language scholarship to tackle the subject."--Andrew Nestingen, author of The Cinema of Aki Kaurismaeki: Contrarian Stories