1st Edition
Animation: A World History Volume I: Foundations - The Golden Age
A continuation of 1994’s groundbreaking Cartoons, Giannalberto Bendazzi’s Animation: A World History is the largest, deepest, most comprehensive text of its kind, based on the idea that animation is an art form that deserves its own place in scholarship. Bendazzi delves beyond just Disney, offering readers glimpses into the animation of Russia, Africa, Latin America, and other often-neglected areas and introducing over fifty previously undiscovered artists. Full of first-hand, never before investigated, and elsewhere unavailable information, Animation: A World History encompasses the history of animation production on every continent over the span of three centuries.
Volume I traces the roots and predecessors of modern animation, the history behind Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie, and twenty years of silent animated films. Encompassing the formative years of the art form through its Golden Age, this book accounts for animation history through 1950 and covers everything from well-known classics like Steamboat Willie to animation in Egypt and Nazi Germany. With a wealth of new research, hundreds of photographs and film stills, and an easy-to-navigate organization, this book is essential reading for all serious students of animation history.
Key Features
- Over 200 high quality head shots and film stills to add visual reference to your research
- Detailed information on hundreds of never-before researched animators and films
- Coverage of animation from more than 90 countries and every major region of the world
- Chronological and geographical organization for quick access to the information you’re looking for
What it is
Mapping chaos
Turning points
Periods
Guilty, but with an explanation
Traces
You won’t find…
A hybrid
BEFORE FANTASMAGORIEArchaeology
Phidias’s animating chisel
Representation
The motion analysis
Music
The meaning of the implicit movement
An object of philosophy
Pre-history 1
Science, science, science
Writing with light
Pre-history 2
A static mirror?
The flipbook
Émile Reynaud
Birth of the théâtre optique
The théâtre optique and how it worked
On with the lantern show
Colour Music
Frame-by-frame
Arthur Melbourne-Cooper
Walter Robert Booth
Edwin S. Porter
James Stuart Blackton
The Cradle
Days of heaven and hell
Culture
Cinema
Narrative, non-narrative
Fantasmagorie
The Fathers
Émile Cohl
Georges Méliès
The first abstract cinema
Arnaldo Ginna
Léopold Survage
Winsor McCay
Colour
The Fathers’ Sons
Comics, animation, cinema
Birth of the industry
Raoul Barré
Cut-Insert-Replace
John Randolph Bray
The IFS
Other American artists
Willis O’Brien
Instruments and language
The Fleischer Brothers
Felix, Pat and Otto Messmer
Terry and the Fables
Bowers unbound
Lantz’s debut
Bray, Hurd, Mintz
Sarg and Dawley
The young Walt Disney
The individualists
Great Britain
Ireland
France
Lortac
Advertisers and illustrators
Germany: Animation in the Weimar Republic
The matrix
Walther Ruttmann
Viking Eggeling
Hans Richter
Lotte Reiniger
Austria
Switzerland
Denmark
Storm P.
Sweden
Grogg the sailor man
Other Swedish animators
Norway
Finland
Spain
Portugal
Hungary
The rest of Europe
Russia/Soviet Union
Ladislas Starewich
After the revolution
Ukraine
Japan
The narrator
Mexico
Colombia
Brazil
Chile
Argentina: the world’s first animated feature film
Quirino Cristiani
Union of South Africa
SILENT OCEANIAAustralia
THE GOLDEN AGESteamboat Willie
Sync or sink
The non-concurrence factor
Sound
Walt Disney the tycoon
The fixed star
Human or animal?
Years of expansion
The ones who made the magic
Another Disney folly
The pillar brother
At Disney's animation declines
The Twelve Rules of the Nine Men
Animation heads west
The masters’ master
Lantz, from the Rabbit to the Woodpecker
Ub Iwerks
Mintz, Krazy and Columbia
Van Beuren
Terrytoons and Mighty Mouse
The Fleischers: Betty Boop, Popeye and two feature films
Warner Brothers
Tex Avery
Bob Clampett
Carl W. Stalling, musical animator
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: Cat, Mouse, Tex
Tashlin the wanderer
The American avant-garde
Animation in Canada
EUROPEGreat Britain
Len Lye
France
Anthony Gross
Berthold Bartosch
Alexandre Alexeïeff
Belgium
The Netherlands
Germany in Nazi time
Hans Fischerkoesen
The Brothers Diehl
Heinz Tischmeyer
Hans Held
Wolfgang Kaskeline
Avant-garde
Oskar Fischinger
Austria
Switzerland
Denmark
Norway
Sweden
Czechoslovakia
Poland
Stefan and Franciszka Themerson
Hungary
George Pal
Yugoslavia
Italy
Greece
Spain
Catalan vibrancy
The Edad Dorada
Barcelona’s entrepreneurs
Barcelonese feature-length films
Madrid
Valencia
Portugal
SOVIET UNIONRussia
Ukraine
Lithuania
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Georgia
ASIAJapan
Ofuji Noburo
Masaoka Kenzo
Kimura Hakuzan
A Brave New World
The changed frame around
Mochinaga Tadahito and his legacy
Ichikawa Kon
China
LATIN AMERICAMexico
Colombia
Venezuela
Brazil
Argentina
AFRICAEgypt
Union of South Africa
Biography
A former professor at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore and the Università degli Studi of Milan, Italian-born Giannalberto Bendazzi has been thoroughly investigating the history of animation for more than forty years. A founding member of the Society for Animation Studies, he authored or edited various classics in various languages, and has lectured extensively on every continent.