UBC Faculty Research and Publications

Comparison of 1914 Film Listings in Newspapers in Three Cities: Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal McIlroy, Brian; Lester, Peter; Birks, Chelsea

Description

This SSHRC funded project (Council Grant number 430-2011-006) set out as its goal to advance our knowledge of the character of film exhibition in the early part of the 20th century in Vancouver, with a specific focus on 1914 as a case study. The following dataset is the third of three surrounding 1914 exhibition history in Vancouver. The first dataset in the "Screens in Vancouver: Cinemagoing and the City in 1914" collection in cIRcle is a record of film listings for Vancouver by cinema and newspaper for each month of 1914. The second dataset compared Vancouver’s film exhibition with Seattle and Winnipeg to see what percentage of overlap in films occurred, and whether empirically proven statements could be made about the distribution of films in 1914. The main conclusion is that very few films overlapped, and thus the cinematic experience in 1914 was largely unique to each city. The following third dataset is a record of the comparison across Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. A legend for abbreviated cinema names in the three cities is also included. The majority of the theatre data was compiled by UBC MA Film Studies graduate Chelsea Birks, with work earlier compiled by Dr. Peter Lester. This study, though it does not claim to be comprehensive, particularly in relation to Toronto, confirms the conclusion from the second data set, which is that very few films overlapped, and thus the cinematic experience in 1914 was largely unique to each city.

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Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada