Learning with the Lights Off

A vastly influential form of filmmaking seen by millions of people, educational films provide a catalog of twentieth century preoccupations and values. As a medium of instruction and guidance, they held a powerful cultural position, producing knowledge both inside and outside the classroom. This is the first collection of essays to address this vital phenomenon. The book provides an ambitious overview of educational film practices, while each essay analyzes a crucial aspect of educational film history, ranging from case studies of films and filmmakers to broader generic and historical assessments. Offering links to many of the films, Learning With the Lights Off provides readers the context and access needed to develop a sophisticated understanding of, and a new appreciation for, a much overlooked film legacy.

Devin Orgeron is Associate Professor at North Carolina State University and co-editor of The Moving Image, the journal of the Association for Moving Image Archivists. He is the author of Road Movies. Marsha Orgeron is Associate Professor of Film Studies at North Carolina State University and co-editor of The Moving Image, the journal of Association for Moving Image Archivists. She is the author of Hollywood Ambitions: Celebrity in the Movie Age. Dan Streible teaches cinema studies at New York University, where he is also associate director of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. He directs the Orphan Film Project and its biennial symposium. He is the author of Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema.

Foreword by Thomas G. Smith Acknowledgments About the Companion Website Introduction 1. A History of Learning with the Lights Off, Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible 2. The Cinema of the Future: Visions of the Medium as Modern Educator, 1895-1910, Oliver Gaycken 3. Communicating Disease: Tuberculosis, Narrative, and Social Order in Thomas Edison's Red Cross Seal Films, Miriam Posner 4. Visualizing Industrial Citizenship, Lee Grieveson 5. Film Education in the Natural History Museum: Cinema Lights Up the Gallery in the 1920s, Alison Griffiths 6. Glimpses of Animal Life: Nature Films and the Emergence of Classroom Cinema, Jennifer Peterson 7. Medical Education through Film: Animating Anatomy at the American College of Surgeons and Eastman Kodak, Kirsten Ostherr 8. Dr. ERPI Finds His Voice: Electrical Research Products, Inc. and the Educational Film Market, 1927-1937, Heide Solbrig 9. Educational Film Projects of the 1930s: Secrets of Success and the Human Relations Film Series, Craig Kridel 10. "An Indirect Influence upon Industry": Rockefeller Philanthropies and the Development of Educational Film in the United States, 1935-1953, Victoria Cain 11. Cornering The Wheat Farmer (1938), Gregory A. Waller 12. The Failure of the NYU Educational Film Institute, Dan Streible 13. Spreading the Word: Race, Religion, and the Rhetoric of Contagion in Edgar G. Ulmer's TB Films, Devin Orgeron 14. Exploitation as Education, Eric Schaefer 15. Smoothing the Contours of Didacticism: Jam Handy and His Organization, Rick Prelinger 16. Museum at Large: Aesthetic Education through Film, Katerina Loukopoulou 17. Celluloid Classrooms and Everyday Projectionists: Post-World War II Consolidation of Community Film Activism, Charles R. Acland 18. Screen Culture and Group Discussion in Postwar Race Relations, Anna McCarthy 19. "A Decent and Orderly Society": Race Relations in Riot-Era Educational Films, 1966-1970, Marsha Orgeron 20. Everything Old Is New Again; or, Why I Collect Educational Films, Skip Elsheimer with Kimberly Pifer 21. Continuing Ed: Educational Film Collections in Libraries and Archives, Elena Rossi-Snook 22. A Select Guide to Educational Film Collections, Elena Rossi-Snook Contributors Index