Currently seeking essays for an anthology on the planning, design, and urban development of motion picture studios, from approximately 1896 to 1960. These large walled studios included police and fire departments, commissaries, water towers, and sometimes honorary mayors. Besides Hollywood, there were “cinema cities” built in Mexico, Italy, Czechoslovakia, India, Germany, Soviet Union, and beyond. Studios often shared similar construction techniques, design, and planning influences. Significant urban communities grew directly adjacent to the studios, such as in Los Angeles, where Hollywood, Studio City, and Culver City sprung up from movie industry speculation or investment. This anthology seeks to examine the built environment’s connection to the film industry, and compare and contrast different cinema cities in a transnational, global perspective.
The volume’s tentative structure builds around several themes as follows:
PART I. 1910s-1920s Early Studio Design and Planning.
Early designers, architects, lighting, and the room needed for silent film production.
PART II. 1927-1938 Talking Picture Development.
Cinema cities, urban development, and the newly-needed space for sound technology.
PART III. 1940s Hinterland and Suburbanization.
Planning, urbanization, residence patterns of movie workers, architectural design, outdoor location sets, and how the movie studios influenced the growth of suburbs.
PART IV. 1950s The End of the Studio System.
The rise of epics and international co-productions, and new planning and architectural trends in the movie industry.
This anthology is part of a larger project, a museum exhibition (of the same name), which will open in late 2018.
To be considered, please send a 300 to 500 word proposal, along with a short biographical note. The preferred format is Microsoft Word as an attachment.
Please send your proposal by 15 December 2016 to Kirby Pringle: Retroactivity@gmail.com
About the editor: Kirby Pringle has a Ph.D in history from Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of the upcoming book about working actor Gino Corrado, Waiting on Hollywood: The Story of an Italian Bit Player (University Press of Mississippi), and is a contributor to the upcoming anthology with Routledge, Music and Sound in the Silent Cinema: From the Nickelodeon to The Artist, edited by Ruth Barton and Simon Trezise. He lives in Los Angeles.