Thomas Edison, the inventor of the Kinetograph (motion picture camera) and the Kinetoscope (peephole viewer of motion pictures), considered using the roll films as one of the options in 1888, the very beginning of developing these devices. At first, Edison experimented the cylinder-type-device, and at some point, Edison shifted to use the roll-film-type-device. On this change, there is an influential opinion. When Edison visited France in August 1889, he met Étienne-Jules Marey. At that time, Marey used paper-based roll film for his chronophotography, and the idea of using roll film hit Edison for the first time. But Edison and his staff testified at the court that they had already got the celluloid roll film from Eastman and made some experiments before Edison’s visit to Paris, August 1889. And George Eastman testified he send one roll of celluloid film to Edison on 24th August, and he showed the letters to and from William Dickson, the assistant of Edison, during July to October 1889. In this paper, we examine the testimonies of Edison and his staff by researching the newspaper and magazine articles and the existing documents in those days.

The War Cabinet founded the National War Aims Committee, an organization formed in August 1917, in order to create British propaganda for the home front during the last stages of the First World War. The committee was involved in cinema in two ways. One of them was outdoor film showing activity handled by its Meeting Department, and the other was producing films cooperating with other official organizations and film companies. The Kincartoons Series produced by the committee and the Kinsella & Morgan Film Company were highly entertaining films revolving around patriotic themes, including how to buy the War Savings Certificates and the promising future that will come in return.

The purpose of this article is to describe similarities of ideological structures between verbal messages presented at the Committee’s meetings and the Kincartoons Series. After examining the series’ morale-boosting narratives and characters that were common to all works, it was clear that the ideological structures shown to cinema audiences were similar to the patriotic themes included in speeches or printed materials. The verbal messages were transformed from words by using visual components and mixed forms of animation style, which made the messages apprehensible to people of all generations.

At the beginning of 1916, a new subsidiary of Universal named Bluebird Photoplays was established. Bluebird’s policy was to produce and distribute a 5-reel feature film a week while focusing on the quality of the film. In the late 1910’s the American film industry had realized the potential of feature length films and Bluebird was an attempt of Universal, which was successful in producing shorts and serials, to respond to the increasing public demand for feature films.

This unique company was often thought to be just one of the many branches of Universal and had long been neglected in American film history. Thanks to an influx of feminist scholarship, it is revealed lately that Bluebird produced a number of films directed by females.

However, the details of Bluebird’s operations or the influence of these female directors remain an under-researched area, which this paper seeks to address. In this paper I will focus on the historical transition of Bluebird and the three female directors, Lois Weber, Ida May Park and Elsie Jane Wilson.

This paper discusses the existence of horizontal running toy projector and its animation films that we obtained in 2018, and their significance in movie history. We prove it by scrutiny and restoration of them, and on the basis of the analysis of the primary literature sources such as catalogs of Japanese, German, and French toy companies from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th.

In general, it is said that the movie started with a Lumière’s Cinematograph. It captures and projects images by moving the film in the vertical direction. It had been considered as natural for movies to record and replay the real world until the digitization of the film advanced like today. However, for a while after the cinematograph was born, the horizontal device for animation preceded the vertical one for live-action except for screening at the movie theaters. This idea inevitably appeared on the extension of various optical toys such as magic lantern for home. Therefore we empirically argue that the two toy films, obtained and restored by us, are very likely to be the oldest animated movies.

In this article, we clarify that the horizontal running device played an important role in the recognition of the visual media for the masses during the transitional period when the epidemic changes from magic lantern to movie.

This paper discusses the representation of “Korean residents in Japan” in Kohei Oguri’s adaptation of “Kayako no tameni” (1984), a novel written by a Korean writer in Japan called Kaisei Ri. The critiques of this film pointed out three defects which are the beautification, the problem of empathizing and the difficulties with understanding the plot. However, these may not be defects. They can be considered as a new representation.

To argue that, this paper analyzes the postwar Japanese films representing Korean residents in Japan before 1984, like “Nianchan” (Shohei Imamura, 1959), “Arega minato no hi da” (Tadashi Imai, 1961), and “Nihon Shunka-ko” (1967), “Koshikei” (1968), “Kaette kita yopparai” (1968), directed by Nagisa Oshima. These films try to exaggerate the dichotomy between Korean and Japanese by beautifying the image of Korean residents in Japan, or to break it by nullifying the idea of identities. However, these films just used Korean residents in Japan to criticize Japanese themselves, and pay little attention to Korean residents in Japan.

On the other hand, “Kayako no tameni” cites other literary works of Kaisei Ri to avoid representing the stereotypes of Korean residents in Japan. It also shows the possibilities of internal and external coexistence.