Dr Brian Jacobson
Lecturer in Film Studies
Research profile
My research explores the intersections of the history and theory of moving image media, the history and philosophy of technology, and art and architectural history. I am currently completing a book project - Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and Early Cinema - a history and comparative analysis of the world's first film studios and their place in the architectural and technological changes of urban industrial modernity. Focusing on French and American studios from Méliès and Edison to the early days of filmmaking in Southern California, this project examines the early formation of cinema's close relationship to architecture and argues that cinema played a critical role in both representing and contributing to early-twentieth-century technological change. I am also conducting research for another book project and several articles about the history of industrial filmmaking in France, Britain, and the U.S. My additional areas of interest include media studies, visual studies, avant-garde and experimental cinema, theories of space and place, and representations of nature and technology.
I completed a Master's degree in Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in Critical Studies at the University of Southern California. I have been a Fulbright Advanced Student Fellow to France and a fellow of the Social Science Research Council's International Dissertation Research Fellowship and Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship.
I am currently director of Postgraduate Taught Studies (MLitt/MPhil) in Film.
See also the PURE research profile.
Research students
I welcome inquiries from research students working on projects exploring silent cinema history and historiography (in any national or transnational contexts); cinema and architecture; cinema and technology; French film history; industrial and corporate film; avant-garde and experimental film/video; and film and media theory, especially theories of space, place, and technology.
Selected publications
Selected Articles
"The Black Maria: Film Studio, Film Technology (Cinema and the History of Technology)," History and Technology 27.2 (2011), 233-241.
"A Business Without a Future?: The Parisian Vidéo-Club, Past and Present," (with Joshua Neves). Media Fields Journal: Critical Explorations in Media and Space, Issue 1 (December 2010) - http://www.mediafieldsjournal.org/a-business-without-future/
"The ‘imponderable fluidity' of modernity: Georges Méliès and the architectural origins of cinema." Early Popular Visual Culture 8, no. 2 (May 2010), 189-207.
"Introduction: Deaths of Cinema" (w/Christopher Hanson & Veronica Paredes). Spectator 27 (2007): 5-8.
Recent Talks
November 2012: Invited Lecture: “Alice Guy and the Architectural Origins of Studio Production at Gaumont,” Alice Guy-Blaché Symposium: Transatlantic Sites of Cinema Nouveau, 1896-1920, University of Maryland/National Gallery of Art
June 2012: "Art and Mechanical Reproduction from the Westinghouse Works to Lunch Break," 22nd International Screen Studies Conference: "Other Cinemas," University of Glasgow
April 2012: "Film Power, Off the Grid: Electrical Infrastructure + Studio Technology in Paris, 1904-1925," Network Archaeology Conference, Miami University, Oxford OH
March 2012: "Fantastic Functionality: Early Studio Architecture and its Photographic Representations," Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Boston, MA
November 2011: "Technology and Visual Culture at the World's First Film Studio," Society for the History of Technology Annual Meeting, Cleveland, OH
July 2011: "Reinventing the Studio: Film Architecture in Southern California, 1909-1915," The Second Birth of Cinema: A Centenary Conference, Newcastle University
April 2011: "The ‘Black Maria' and its Afterlives: Visual Technology and Visual Culture, First Annual Anne Friedberg Memorial Grant Lecture, USC Visual Studies Graduate Certificate, University of Southern California
March 2011: Presenter and Panel Chair: "A Specific Art of the Machine: New Approaches to Film and Technology," Paper: "The Black Maria: Studio, Machine, Human-Built World," Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, New Orleans, LA
February 2011: "Producing Cinema and Industrial Modernity at the Cité Elgé, 1919-1929," First International Berkeley Conference on Silent Cinema: Cinema Across Media: The 1920s, University of California, Berkeley
February 2011: "Georges Méliès's ‘Voyages Extraordinaires': Film Technology and Technological Critique," Society for French Historical Studies Conference, Charleston, SC
June 2010: "Glass, Steel, Concrete, and Celluloid: ‘Building' Cinema in the Bronx, 1906-1909," 11th Domitor Conference: Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early Cinema, Toronto, Ontario
March 2010: "Factories of Vision/Visionary Factories: Early Cinema, Technology, & the Modern Built Environment," Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Los Angeles
February 2010: Invited Lecture: "Les Premiers studios du monde: architecture, technologie, et le film des premiers temps," Séminaire Histoire culturelle du cinéma (Christophe Gautier, Anne Kerlan-Stephens, Dmitri Vezyroglou), Institut d'histoire du temps present, Paris
Current research
In addition to my current book project, Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and Early Cinema, I am conducting research for a book about the history of industrial filmmaking in France. I am also working on articles about industrial film in Britain and the U.S., as well as articles about early film in contemporary film and video art and representations of nature and technology in avant-garde and experimental film and video.
Teaching
I am teaching or have recently taught in the following modules:
Postgraduate modules
FM5001:Theory and Practice of Research in Film Studies (co-convener)
FM5103: Film Technologies and Aesthetics: Film and/as Technology (convener)
Undergraduate modules
FM2002: Film Theory, Culture, and Entertainment