"Exhaustively researched and exquisitely written,
Everyday Movies is the first truly twenty-first-century history of twentieth-century film. Where cinema history has prized theatrical exhibition, Haidee Wasson shows that
mobility is the central term for cinema history. Where film theory has fetishized a single kind of apparatus and spectator, Wasson reveals the wide range of people, institutions, and practices that defined what movies are and what they can do.”—Jonathan Sterne, author of
MP3: The Meaning of a Format "In this captivating book, Wasson moves film history out of the theater and into the varied spaces of portable projection at world's fairs, military zones, stores, classrooms, workplaces, and more. More than just history of technical inventions,
Everyday Movies looks seriously at a virtually overlooked device that transformed experience in twentieth-century life. Brilliantly researched and full of surprises!"—Lynn Spigel, author of
TV by Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television"Everyday Movies is irresistible. Wasson directs our gaze in the unlikeliest of directions and then ends up reframing almost everything we thought we knew about film in America during the extended moment of classical Hollywood cinema."—Lisa Gitelman, author of
Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents "Rather than discussing portable projectors as something on the fringe or periphery of film culture, Wasson repositions them in the center––as the norm for film viewing for much of the twentieth century. We come away seeing how the story of American film is also the story of big business, the military, public education, and information management systems. A highly ambitious and significant contribution."—Eric Hoyt, author of
Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries before Home Video "This book offers a striking and important new perspective on cinema history, cultures, and institutions, as well as on media's intertwining with American social and economic history. While the technologies it examines are small, the questions it asks are big and consequential.
Everyday Movies will have resonances far beyond its primary fields."—Alice Lovejoy, author of
Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military
