Daniel Biltereyst is Professor in Film, Television and Cultural Studies at the Department of Communication Studies, Ghent University, Belgium, where he leads the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS). His research on film and screen culture as sites of controversy and censorship has been published in Cultural Policy, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Media, Culture & Society, Northern Lights, Studies in French Cinema, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.

Richard Maltby is Professor of Screen Studies and Deputy Execuive Dean of the Faculty of Education, Humanities, Law and Theology at Flinders University, South Australia. He is Series Editor of Exeter Studies in Film History, and the author of over 50 articles and essays, and the lead investigator on two Australian Research Council Discovery projects examining the structure of the distribution and exhibition industry and the history of cinema audiences in Australia.

Philippe Meers is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His publications on popular media culture and film audiences have appeared in Media, Culture and Society, The Journal of Popular Film and Television, The Bulletin, Iluminace and other journals. He is the lead investigator on The 'Enlightened' City-project on the history of film exhibition and film culture in Flanders and Brussels (2005-8, with Daniël Biltereyst and Marnix Beyen).

Chapter 1. Cinema, audiences and modernity: an introduction Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers Part I - Cinema, Tradition and Community Chapter 2. Cinema-going between ideology and commerce: a longitudinal research on rural versus urban cinema in Flanders (1920s-1970s) Philippe Meers, Kathleen Lotze, Lies Van de Vijver and Daniel Biltereyst Chapter 3. Spaces of Early Film Exhibition in Sweden, 1897-1911 Asa Jernudd Chapter 4. Movie-going under Military Occupation, Düsseldorf, 1919 - 1925 Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk Chapter 5. 'Christ is coming to the Elite cinema': Film exhibition in the Catholic South of the Netherlands, 1910s and 1920s Thunnis Van Oort Chapter 6. The Cinematic Shapes of the Socialist Modernity Programme: Ideological and Economic Parameters of Cinema Distribution in the Czech Lands, 1948 - 1970 Pavel Skopal Chapter 7. '...The Management Committee intend to act as Ushers': Cinema Operation and the South Wales Miners' Institutes in the 1950s and 1960s Stefan Moitra Part II - Audiences, Modernity and Cultural Exchange Chapter 8. Urban legend: Early cinema, modernization, and urbanization in Germany, 1895 - 1914 Annemone Ligensa Chapter 9. 'Diagnosis: Flimmeritis': Female Cinema-going in Imperial Germany, 1911 - 1918 Andrea Haller Chapter 10. AFGRUNDEN in Germany: Monopolfilm, Cinema-Going and the Emergence of the Film Star Asta Nielsen, 1910 - 1911 Martin Loiperdinger Chapter 11. 'Senza Patria' or without a homeland: Italian war films and immigrants in London, 1914 - 1918 Pierluigi Ercole Chapter 12. Imagining modern Hungary through film: debates on national identity, modernity and cinema in early twentieth century Hungary Ana Manchin Chapter 13. Hollywood in disguise: Practices of exhibition and reception of foreign films in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s Petr Szczepanik

This book sheds new light on the cinema and modernity debate by confronting established theories on the role of the modern cinematic experience with new empirical work on the history of the social experience of cinema-going, film audiences and film exhibition.
The book provides a wide range of research methodologies and perspectives on these matters, including:
the use of oral history methods
questionnaires
diaries
audience letters
as well as industrial, sociological and other accounts on historical film audiences.
The collection's case studies thus provide a "how to" compendium of current methodologies for researchers and students working on film and media audiences, film and media experiences, and historical reception.
The volume is part of a 'new cinema history' effort within film and screen studies to look at film history not only as a history of production, textual relations or movies-as-artefacts, but rather to concentrate more on the receiving end, the social experience of cinema, and the engagement of film/cinema (history) 'from below'. The contributions to the volume reflect upon the very different ways in which cinema has been accepted, rejected or disciplined as an agent of modernity in neighbouring parts of Europe, and how cinema-going has been promoted and regulated as a popular social practice at different times in twentieth-century European history.