Episode Details

Scott Curtis, associate professor of radio/film/television and communication at Northwestern University, has published extensively on the use of moving images in scientific and medical research, education, and communication. That particular interest certainly informs most of his picks, but the conversation also includes the spectacle of sound and fantasy.

Scott is the author of The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany. He is the former president of Domitor, the international society for the study of early cinema.

Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five of 1905!

Films and resources mentioned:

• New York Subway (1905) - Billy Bitzer
• Coney Island at Night (1905) - Edwin S. Porter
• Five O’Clock Tea (1905) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• The Inventor Crazybrains and His Wonderful Airship (1905) - Georges Méliès
• Epileptic Seizure nos. 1-9 (1905) - Walter G. Chase
• Electrocuting an Elephant (1903) - Edwin S. Porter
• A Crazy Composer (1905) - Georges Méliès
• The Infernal Cake Walk (1903) - Georges Méliès
• The One-Man Band (1900) - Georges Méliès
• The Dirigible ‘Homeland’ (1907) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• Surgical Operation (1905) - unknown
• Up-to-date Surgery (1902) - Georges Méliès
• Turn-of-the-Century Surgery (1900) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• A Trip to the Moon (1902) - Georges Méliès
• The Impossible Voyage (1904) - Georges Méliès
• Silent Film Sound - Rick Altman
• Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture - Lisa Cartwright