Dan Streible writes: >The book you want is the anthology called > >THIS FILM IS DANGEROUS, edited by Roger Smithers, assembled for the 2000 >FIAF symposium on nitrate film. Here you'll find a number of case studies >about film fires. (General conclusion: most theater fires were NOT >caused by nitrate film catching fire, but by a variety of other factors.) I want it too... but it's now been provisionally renamed 'The Nitrate Book' and is not out yet. There were various funding problems related to the Imperial War Museum's role in the publication of it: when I met Roger shortly before Christmas he was expecting them to be resolved very soon and for publication to happen around Easter. In the meantime, I wrote a contribution to that book dealing with the film industry's conversion from nitrate to safety stocks in the late 1940s: it does not contain any detailed accounts of specific fires (it mentions one in Chicago in 1949, but that's it) but one or two of the footnotes will point you in a possibly fruitful direction (no promises, though). If anyone would like a copy e-mailed as a .PDF file attachment, please contact me off-list. Turning specifically to the issue of cinema fires, there was one in London in 1908 which was the short-term impetus behind the 1909 Cinematograph Act, the legislation which had the side-effect of providing the legal basis for film censorship in this country. For more information, see Neville March Hunnings, 'Film Censors and the Law' (London, 1967) and Dorothy Knowles, 'The Censor, The Drama and The Film' (London, 1932). Leo Dr. Leo Enticknap Director, Northern Region Film and Television Archive School of Arts and Media University of Teesside Middlesbrough TS1 3BA United Kingdom Tel. +44-(0)1642 384022 Fax. +44-(0)1642 384099 Brainfryer: +44-(0)7710 417383 ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]