1907

1907, somewhat unlike the past couple years covered on this show, is chock-full of historical developments with details that are fun to plumb. But exploring the legal battles, studio foundings, and trade journal publications of the year just sets up the spectacular film texts themselves, with guests’ selections ranging from chase film evolutions to horrifically bizarre gems to actualities as historical documents to an animation milestone.

Film historian Matt Page has been researching film adaptations of the Bible for over 20 years. And yet only one of his picks for 1907 stems from that source and this wide-ranging conversation also reaches chases, tricks, and more.

Three of Associate Professor at Brock University Liz Clarke’s picks are defined by a sort of morbid delight. But with a cuddlier creature and the colonizing gaze represented in her other two selections, the conversation reveals more layers of the global film industry in 1907.

Filmmaker and musician Sean Guinan has an eye for the surreal, as exhibited by his TikTok channel Candy Town Follies. With that in mind, his selections cover a lot of topical and aesthetic ground, from eroticism and over-the-top comedy to social commentary and actuality footage of a major 20th century pop culture figure.

Agata Frymus, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Monash University Malaysia, selects mostly comic films to represent 1907. But by rounding out her selections with an (only maybe regrettably?) lost historical drama and the first Japanese selection of the whole show, she illustrates the multiplicity of film form at the time.

Film historian Randy Haberkamp just recently retired as the Executive Vice President of the Library, Archive and Sci-Tech for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he held various positions for 23 years. With that experience in film preservation in mind, he highlights hard-to-find films as well as more famed stars and titles.

Some already old-school genres, from the chase film to the vaudeville recreation to the traveling actuality, made a good showing in the most selected films for this 1907 season. But the unique array of picks, among the most diverse list of films for the show so far, paints a better picture of how the cinematic medium was unfolding in new directions as much as it was holding on to established formulas.