Dimitrios Latsis, Ph.D., has received the Richard Wall Memorial Award for his book How the Movies Got a Past: A Historiography of American Cinema 1894-1930 from the Theatre Library Association (TLA). He will receive the award on October 18 at the annual TLA awards ceremony, broadcast on YouTube.
“[Receiving the award] is humbling,” said Latsis. “Looking at the names of past TLA award recipients, I see major figures in the fields, like Tom Gunning or Richard Abel – people I consider mentors or models. Being recognized alongside them is a very nice surprise.”
How the Movies Got a Past highlights a variety of people from early film, including filmmakers, inventors and researchers. To create a full picture of early American cinema, Latsis pulled from various archives from North America and Europe, showcasing how cinema, a relatively new medium between the years of 1894 and 1930, was already being talked about and discussed in a historical context. He compared the phenomenon to modern historians writing about emerging technology like artificial intelligence.
“These early historians collected invaluable documents and objects that are now in museums and archives. Without those, we would not have been able to tell the story of early cinema.”
Inside the book, readers will find over 50 archival images, publications and studio advertisements from the era, as well as a companion website, hosting full-length versions of the films highlighted.
Latsis’ next project is a companion piece to his book, a creative nonfiction book focusing on six people – directors, actors and animators – and their lives in Los Angeles from August 1930 to July 1931.
Latsis said, “The overall theme [of the companion piece] is failure, so I want to think more rigorously about what failure means and why things fail. Maybe it is a necessary or good thing.”
Latsis is a historian and digital humanist, focusing on the intersection of archival and visual culture, primarily film. He received his Ph.D. in film studies from the University of Iowa and is an associate professor of digital and audiovisual preservation at The University of Alabama, where he teaches methods and practices in archiving digital files and audiovisual works like film. He is also the EBSCO Scholars program coordinator.
For more information on Dimitrios Latsis and his work, visit his professor page or his book at Oxford University press.