Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema

Murray Leeder teaches Film Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada, and holds a PhD from Carleton University. He is the author of  Horror Film: A Critical Introduction (forthcoming) and Halloween (2014) and editor of Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era (2015).

• 1.Introduction.- 2. The Haunting of Film Theory.- 3. Light and Lies: Screen Practice and (Super-) Natural Magic.- 4. The Strange Case of George Albert Smith: Mesmerism, Psychical Research and Cinema.- 5. Aesthetics of Co-Registration: Spirit Photography, X-Rays and Cinema.- 6. Méliès’s Skeleton: Gender, Cinema’s Danse Macabre and the Erotics of Bone.- 7. Living Pictures at Will: Projecting Haunted Minds.- 8. Conclusion: Lost Worlds, Ghost Worlds.

“The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema is a cornucopia of ideas, arguments and images both scrupulously well researched and highly readable. This original exploration of film history makes for one of the most pleasurable books I’ve read in 2017.” (Alan Price, The Magonia Blog, pelicanist.blogspot.de, April 05, 2019)