Contextualizing digital clips for scholarly use, in our view, includes offering access to the longer work from which the clip is drawn. Thus, our Shanghai clips from the Joan Branch Collection, ranging in length from 27 seconds to 6 minutes, may also be viewed in the context of the full reel from which they came. Kang Cao has posted our full-length Branch reels 5501 and 5502 here.
Joan Branch Collection, Reel 5501 (48 minutes)
Joan Branch Collection, Reel 5502 (28 minutes)
Why is this an element of our project, Finding and Using Moving Images in Context? Because advancement of the scholarly use of moving images in the humanities will benefit from a general practice of access to many levels of moving images and their documentation. Deracinated film excerpts are as useless as unmoored text. An unfamiliar quotation appearing in a paper without attribution is worthless. Moving images, to serve as meaningful humanities texts, must retain connections to their origins.
Northeast Historic Film is located at the 1916 Alamo Theatre in Bucksport, Maine. Karan Sheldon, NHF co-founder, is project director for Finding and Using Moving Images in Context.