Animation

Accounting for animation’s pervasiveness, heterogeneity and intermediality, this article reflects conceptions of animation historiography. It brings together contemporary perspectives and methods in the research of animation history/historiography, and considers tangible approaches outside animation studies. Particular attention is paid to materials and aspects that are overlooked and non-canonical. The authors conceptualize animation historiography in the shape of a rhizome, enabling a better understanding of the relations between canonical aspects and fringes, and enriching the dialogue between the various disciplines, actors and institutions writing the histories of animation. Following a look at the current state of debate about animation history/histories and historiography in animation studies, the article surveys pertinent debates in film studies, art history and media art history. It then discusses historical research in performance studies and in the history of science, both concerned with fields where animation is often marginalized, as well as animation-related research on motion graphics and useful cinema, themselves under-researched topics, for perspectives to reconceptualize animation history. Media archaeology, its approaches and methodology, will be addressed repeatedly from the perspectives of the different disciplines and areas. The article is conceived as an ‘open paper’, understood as an invitation to further discuss animation historiography on a metalevel.

This article aims to reanimate and expand on the often-neglected details of the zoetrope’s history, offering new insightful evidence from archival sources about this 19th-century optical toy’s genealogy. From its theorizing by William G. Horner in 1834 to its commercialization in 1867, this new study of the zoetrope’s original patents and archival materials suggests that all the three patents, filed in the same year, months apart from one another, in England, the United States, and France, are connected to the Milton Bradley Company. The historical investigation extends to the forgotten characteristics of the zoetrope, bringing them to light in combination with a hands-on approach through the lens of experimental media archaeology. This includes experiments with ‘zoetropic editing’, allowing for a recontextualization of its imaginative potential and playability through the combination of two different strips. From this animation practitioner and researcher’s point of view, the contributions shared in this article can expand and challenge the way we play with, teach about, and produce animations for the zoetrope today.

Before 1940, the influence of foreign films, filmmakers and film networks on film culture in the Netherlands was substantial. This article investigates how various Dutch professionals within the fields of film production, distribution, exhibition and reception referred to animation film, in a period when this term was not part of the Dutch language. From early on, animation film was recognized as being ‘intrinsically different’ from live-action film and, along with the gradual emergence of this new artistic form, a corresponding language to support it evolved, influenced by language contacts in various contexts in the multilingual landscape in Europe. From the first singular appearances in 1913, a more form-specific terminology had gradually developed by 1940. During the same time, animation film steadily proceeded to occupy its permanent place in Dutch film culture.

This article reflects on the complexities of doing animation history in relation to Lotte Reiniger, perhaps the most famous and prolific woman in animation but a figure who has been mythologized, marginalized and excluded from traditional film historical accounts. Beginning with a survey of existing scholarship, this article introduces the possibility of reading Reiniger as an ‘anachronist’ – one out of harmony with her own time – by drawing on the emerging field of media archaeology. The idea of Reiniger ‘out of time’ prompted a series of film society reconstructions, re-imagined from surviving archival materials (programmes, newspaper cuttings, letters) and presented to contemporary audiences on 16 mm and 35 mm prints. This article will reflect on the research, development and delivery of the re-enactments, bringing these experiments into dialogue with writings on media archaeology, reconstruction and performance theory. Film reconstructions are presented as a form of feminist media archaeology, which can offer an alternative to traditional chronological history.

The leading Portuguese modernist José de Almada Negreiros (1893–1970) often interacted with cinema and was particularly captivated by animation. While Almada’s stay in Madrid – from 1927 to 1932 – was marked by a magic lantern show and echoes of cut-out animation in his visual works, his presentation on Disney at the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Lisbon is a milestone of the reception of animation in Portugal. Drawing upon current art historiographical debates, this article addresses the case of Almada as a way to reconstruct the history of the reception of animation in peripheral countries. Simultaneously, it highlights the importance of interdisciplinarity, the intertwinement between history and theory, as well as the support of archival research.

Contrary to popular belief, ‘making-of’ documentaries are not a phenomenon of contemporary home cinema culture, but have a long pre-DVD history. This article engages with a special subcategory: ‘making-of’ documentaries on the production of animation. With a focus on French and American examples, the author retraces the transition of production imagery from metaleptic cartoons to emergent documentary genres of the 1930s, arguing that this historical shift reformulated the question of how the creation of animated films can be captured cinematically. Providing decidedly nonfiction (but not necessarily ‘objective’) images of the making of animation, the films challenged established concepts to address the realm of cinematic production. The article seeks to examine this theoretical potential, using the notion of a cinematic hors-cadre as a key example.

This article explores the history of animation manuals in the United States from the 1940s to the present. It argues that this history can be divided into three major periods that correspond to changes in technique, profession and industry. From the post-War period until the 1980s, manuals reflected the hegemony of hand-drawn animation, closely bound to studio production and an apprenticeship training system. At the end of the 1970s, the rise of computer animation led to a new type of guidebook, addressing a growing convergence of computational training and new requirements introduced by the animation industry. Finally, since the turn of the century, manuals have sought to combine hand-drawn skills with digital tools, re-negotiating tradition and novelty in a diversified professional environment. Therefore, manuals are situated at a changing nexus of professional identity and training, techniques and technology, aesthetics and modes of production. In this article, the author argues that their integration within the history of animation will prove beneficial to researchers. Nevertheless, manuals are not innocent sources, but reflect discursive positions that shape the very history in which they take part.