Oct 8, 2026 · 27 min · 13 segments
We're at the 45th Giornate del Cinema Muto at Pordenone and I'm talking to American author and academic Allison Nadia Field about her 20226 book: *Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That…
John BleasdaleHost
And I mean, you talk about some of these films are no longer extant and that's where you've worked previously.
Is there a greater sort of risk of films disappearing if they are by black performers and black directors or is or don't we know? I mean, it's 90% of all films from this period are just gone.
yeah there absolutely is a greater risk by of films by black filmmakers not surviving for a lot of reasons not least of which has to do with resources and the fact that these filmmakers often made very few prints because it was expensive they circulated and then they disintegrated and they were lost they also weren't Copywriting their films, of course, at this period, there was no copyright and films weren't valuable after they had lost their commercial appeal.
And of course, we know nitrate is very ephemeral, if not properly stored.
The other greater risk I think is that these black filmmakers in particular and all non-white and also non-mainstream films was that they weren't kind of valued in the same way.
And so unless circumstances led to them miraculously being saved, usually by accident, most of these films are just gone.
And because there were fewer copies made, there's less of a likelihood of finding anything.
This survives largely because it was made by William Selig, who was a prolific filmmaker, very popular, one of the kind of major filmmakers of the time.
And it probably survives because it was shown widely, the Norway version, was found in the Arctic Circle.
And it was a print that had been brought to Norway from the States by an itinerant exhibitor.
And so it just happened to end up at a place where the conditions were right to preserve film.
This one, we have no idea of the provenance that led to it being found or among the collection of a collector in New Orleans is where Dino Everett got it from.
So we really don't know how this first generation nitrate print ended up in New Orleans.
And so one of the things I talk about in the book, in between each chapter, I have these interstices where I talk about sites of exhibition and the different kinds of places where we know the film was shown, but of course we have no record of what audiences thought or, you know, really the context of exhibition, really.
And so I talk about the places and the kind of people that were there and what it would have meant to see a film like this in that space.
So the idea is you buy something and you go upstairs and you watch a film show.
And I mean, you talk about some of these films are no longer extant and that's where you've worked previously.
Is there a greater sort of risk of films disappearing if they are by black performers and black directors or is or don't we know? I mean, it's 90% of all films from this period are just gone.
yeah there absolutely is a greater risk by of films by black filmmakers not surviving for a lot of reasons not least of which has to do with resources and the fact that these filmmakers often made very few prints because it was expensive they circulated and then they disintegrated and they were lost they also weren't Copywriting their films, of course, at this period, there was no copyright and films weren't valuable after they had lost their commercial appeal.
And of course, we know nitrate is very ephemeral, if not properly stored.
The other greater risk I think is that these black filmmakers in particular and all non-white and also non-mainstream films was that they weren't kind of valued in the same way.
And so unless circumstances led to them miraculously being saved, usually by accident, most of these films are just gone.
And because there were fewer copies made, there's less of a likelihood of finding anything.
This survives largely because it was made by William Selig, who was a prolific filmmaker, very popular, one of the kind of major filmmakers of the time.
And it probably survives because it was shown widely, the Norway version, was found in the Arctic Circle.
And it was a print that had been brought to Norway from the States by an itinerant exhibitor.
And so it just happened to end up at a place where the conditions were right to preserve film.
This one, we have no idea of the provenance that led to it being found or among the collection of a collector in New Orleans is where Dino Everett got it from.
So we really don't know how this first generation nitrate print ended up in New Orleans.
And so one of the things I talk about in the book, in between each chapter, I have these interstices where I talk about sites of exhibition and the different kinds of places where we know the film was shown, but of course we have no record of what audiences thought or, you know, really the context of exhibition, really.
And so I talk about the places and the kind of people that were there and what it would have meant to see a film like this in that space.
So the idea is you buy something and you go upstairs and you watch a film show.
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