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Abstract

This article argues that the development of digital research and teaching platforms are changing the ways we understand and approach audiovisual archives today. Focusing on the Media Ecology’s Semantic Annotation Tool (SAT) and its application to early film, it proposes that this new digital humanities resource profoundly impacts our understanding of female achievement in the development of the nascent cinema. Making reiterative viewing of a single shot or sequence of shots possible, the SAT evidences the importance of access to screen content in archives, the significance of reviewing physical agency on film in conjunction with technical and other developments, and the ongoing, critical need to develop a language capable of describing gestures and physical expression on screen. The article concludes with a reflection on our contemporary access to large collections of digital data and metadata. Microhistory, it is explained, is the methodological tool that allows us to reiteratively view materials while speculating about historical process and change. The development of research/pedagogic digital tools consequently broadens and focuses academic and cultural developments across the digital humanities today.

Additional Files
Figures 1a and 1b. Lillian Gish faints in A Cry for Help (Biograph, 1912).png (714 kB)
Figures 1a and 1b. Lillian Gish faints in A Cry for Help (Biograph, 1912).
Figure 2. “D. W. Griffith directing Lillian Gish in The Battle of the Sexes (Mutual Film Corporation, 1914). This was Griffith’s first feature after leaving Biograph. It is a lost film.”.png (1697 kB)
Figure 2. “D. W. Griffith directing Lillian Gish in The Battle of the Sexes (Mutual Film Corporation, 1914). This was Griffith’s first feature after leaving Biograph. It is a lost film.”
A Cry for Help (1912) Clip 1 - Duckett.mp4 (52385 kB)
Clip 1. Reiterative viewing available on MEP, evidencing Gish’s acting skills in A Cry for Help.
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