“Revealing Nature’s Closest Secrets”
“Revealing Nature’s Closest Secrets”
F. Martin Duncan’s Popular-Science Films at the Charles Urban Trading Company
This chapter describes the earliest popular-science films made for the Charles Urban Trading Company by F. Martin Duncan. Duncan’s films were modeled largely on the preexisting format of the magic-lantern lecture. The best known of Duncan’s films were the first series he produced; entitled The Unseen World, it was a series of single-shot films taken through a microscope. The chapter analyzes the extensive press reaction to these films, paying particular attention to Cheese Mites, a film that achieved considerable notoriety. The reception of Cheese Mites provides a case study for how cinema both inherited and transformed previous visual display traditions.
Keywords: F. Martin Duncan, Charles Urban, The Unseen World, Cheese Mites, microcinematography, magic-lantern lecture, intertextuality, trick film
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