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January 2002, Week 3

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Subject:
From:
Leo Enticknap <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 16 Jan 2002 21:34:54 +0000
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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

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