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Tales of Militant Chemistry
The Film Factory in a Century of War
The untold story of film as a chemical cousin to poison gas and nuclear weapons, shaped by centuries of violent extraction
The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another tale to tell that connects film as a material to the twentieth century’s history of war, destruction, and cruelty.
This story comes into focus during World War II at the factories of Tennessee Eastman, where photographic giant Kodak produced the rudiments of movie magic. Not far away, at Oak Ridge, Kodak was also enriching uranium for the Manhattan Project—uranium mined in the Belgian Congo and destined for the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. While the world’s largest film manufacturer transformed into a formidable military contractor, across the ocean its competitor Agfa grew entangled with Nazi Germany’s machinery of war. After 1945, Kodak’s film factories stood at the front lines of a new, colder war, as their photosensitive products became harbingers of the dangers of nuclear fallout.
Following scientists, soldiers, prisoners, and spies through Kodak’s and Agfa’s global empires, Alice Lovejoy links the golden age of cinema and photography to colonialism, the military-industrial complex, radioactive dust, and toxic waste. Revelatory and chilling,Tales of Militant Chemistry shows how film became a weapon whose chemistry irrevocably shaped the world we live in today.
The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another tale to tell that connects film as a material to the twentieth century’s history of war, destruction, and cruelty.
This story comes into focus during World War II at the factories of Tennessee Eastman, where photographic giant Kodak produced the rudiments of movie magic. Not far away, at Oak Ridge, Kodak was also enriching uranium for the Manhattan Project—uranium mined in the Belgian Congo and destined for the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. While the world’s largest film manufacturer transformed into a formidable military contractor, across the ocean its competitor Agfa grew entangled with Nazi Germany’s machinery of war. After 1945, Kodak’s film factories stood at the front lines of a new, colder war, as their photosensitive products became harbingers of the dangers of nuclear fallout.
Following scientists, soldiers, prisoners, and spies through Kodak’s and Agfa’s global empires, Alice Lovejoy links the golden age of cinema and photography to colonialism, the military-industrial complex, radioactive dust, and toxic waste. Revelatory and chilling,Tales of Militant Chemistry shows how film became a weapon whose chemistry irrevocably shaped the world we live in today.
Alice Lovejoy is author of the award-winning Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military. A former editor at Film Comment, she is a professor of film and media studies at the University of Minnesota.
"Alice Lovejoy’s writing makes you re-see the world film made—connecting the graphic violence of war to the stealthy violence of a chemical-laden world. A fascinating, gripping, globe-spanning guide to a history that now connects us all."—Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
“This highly original and compelling study offers a long hard look at the underside of cinema’s modernity, one that has been violent, destructive, dangerous, and cruel. Beautifully written and brilliantly argued, Tales of Militant Chemistry stuns with its rigorous scholarship and reads like a page-turning dystopian novel. It will be discussed for years to come.”—Haidee Wasson, author of Everyday Movies: Portable Film Projectors and the Transformation of American Culture
"Tales of Militant Chemistry is an extraordinary contribution to the history of the twentieth century, and to the methodology of cultural history. By focusing on the materials and chemicals that made film possible, Lovejoy provides an original and surprising perspective on the entwined histories of both culture and warfare. This is essential reading for historians of the environment, science, warfare, and culture."—Tara Zahra, author of Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars
"Tales of Militant Chemistry offers a gripping narrative of twentieth-century film stock’s chemical entanglement with modern violence—with the atom bomb, trench warfare, industrial accident, racism, and plantation slavery. This is leading-edge scholarship at the intersections of media studies, cultural history and the new materialisms."—Stephanie LeMenager, author of Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century
"This work of deep nuance and adept analysis describes the subtle process by which medium, carrier, and production are intertwined. Readers will no longer see the film industry simply as a manufacturer of movies, but as a system of interdependent and interconnected manufacturing, financial, and political processes deeply embedded in the international violence of the twentieth century."—Rick Prelinger, cofounder of Prelinger Library and Archives and Emerit Professor of Film & Digital Media, UC Santa Cruz
“This highly original and compelling study offers a long hard look at the underside of cinema’s modernity, one that has been violent, destructive, dangerous, and cruel. Beautifully written and brilliantly argued, Tales of Militant Chemistry stuns with its rigorous scholarship and reads like a page-turning dystopian novel. It will be discussed for years to come.”—Haidee Wasson, author of Everyday Movies: Portable Film Projectors and the Transformation of American Culture
"Tales of Militant Chemistry is an extraordinary contribution to the history of the twentieth century, and to the methodology of cultural history. By focusing on the materials and chemicals that made film possible, Lovejoy provides an original and surprising perspective on the entwined histories of both culture and warfare. This is essential reading for historians of the environment, science, warfare, and culture."—Tara Zahra, author of Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars
"Tales of Militant Chemistry offers a gripping narrative of twentieth-century film stock’s chemical entanglement with modern violence—with the atom bomb, trench warfare, industrial accident, racism, and plantation slavery. This is leading-edge scholarship at the intersections of media studies, cultural history and the new materialisms."—Stephanie LeMenager, author of Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century
"This work of deep nuance and adept analysis describes the subtle process by which medium, carrier, and production are intertwined. Readers will no longer see the film industry simply as a manufacturer of movies, but as a system of interdependent and interconnected manufacturing, financial, and political processes deeply embedded in the international violence of the twentieth century."—Rick Prelinger, cofounder of Prelinger Library and Archives and Emerit Professor of Film & Digital Media, UC Santa Cruz