The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History presents the most recent approaches and methods in the study of the social experience of cinema, from its origins in vaudeville and travelling exhibition to the multiplexes of today.

Daniel Biltereyst is Professor in Film and Media Studies at Ghent University, Belgium, where he is also director of the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS). His work deals with issues of media historiography, media controversy, and audience's media engagements.

Richard Maltby is Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Screen Studies at Flinders University, South Australia. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, he has published extensively on the cultural history of Hollywood, and has edited seven books on the history of cinema audiences, exhibition, and reception.

Philippe Meers is Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, where he chairs the Center for Mexican Studies and is deputy-director of the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi). He has published widely on historical and contemporary film culture and audiences.

Introduction: The scope of new cinema history, Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers

PART 1. Reflections and comments

Introduction: the scope of new cinema history, Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby, and Philippe Meers

PART I. Reflections and comments

Introduction

1. Connections, intermediality, and the anti-archive: a conversation with Robert C. Allen, Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers

2. Film history, cultural memory, and the experience of cinema: a conversation with Annette Kuhn, Daniel Biltereyst

3. How I became a new cinema historian, Melvyn Stokes

4. The subject of history and the clutter of phenomena, John Caughie

5. The new nontheatrical cinema history?, Gregory A. Waller

PART II. Challenges and opportunities

Introduction

6. Reading newspapers and writing American silent cinema history, Richard Abel

7. Arclights and zoom lenses: searching for influential exhibitors in film history's big data, Eric Hoyt

8. Comparing historical cinema cultures: reflections on new cinema history and comparison with a cross-national case study on Antwerp and Rotterdam, Daniel Biltereyst, Thunnis van Oort and Philippe Meers

9. The archaeology of itinerant film exhibition: unpacking the Brinton Entertainment Company Collection, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley

10. Cinema history as social history: retrospect and prospect, Judith Thissen

PART III. Distribution and trade

Introduction

11. Early film stars in trade journals and newspapers: data-based research on global distribution and local exhibition, Martin Loiperdinger

12. The high stakes conflict between the Motion Picture Export Association and the Netherlands Cinema Association 1945-1946, Clara Pafort-Overduin and Douglas Gomery

13. "Perhaps everyone has forgotten just how pictures are shown to the public": continuous performance and double billing in the 1930s, Richard Maltby

14. "When in doubt, Showcase": The rise and fall of United Artists' revolutionary New York distribution pattern, Zoë Wallin

15. When distributors' trash becomes exhibitors' treasure: rethinking film success and failure, Dean Brandum, Bronwyn Coate, and Deb Verhoeven

PART IV. Exhibition, place and space

Introduction

16. Roll the credits: gender, geography, and the people's history of cinema, Jeffrey Klenotic

17. Three moments of cinema exhibition, Mike Walsh, Richard Maltby, and Dylan Walker

18. Currents of empire: transport, electricity, and early film exhibition in colonial Indonesia, Dafna Ruppin

19. Remembering the first movie theatres and early cinema exhibition in Quay, Smyrna, Turkey, Dilek Kaya

20. Exhibiting films in a predominantly Mexican American market: the case of Laredo, Texas, a small USA-Mexico border town, 1896-1960, José Carlos Lozano

PART V. Programming, popularity, and film

Introduction

21. Popular filmgoing in mid-1950s Milan: opening up the 'black box', John Sedgwick and Marina Nicoli

22. Distribution and exhibition in Warner Bros. Philadelphia Theaters, 1935-1936, Catherine Jurca

23. To be continued...: seriality, cyclicality and the new cinema history, Tim Snelson

24. Kino-barons and noble minds: specifics of film exhibition beyond commercial entertainment, Lucie Cesálková

25. When the history of moviegoing is a history of movie watching, then what about the films?, Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk

26. The evergreens and mayflies of film history: the age distribution of films in exhibition, Karel Dibbets

PART VI. Audiences, reception, and cinemagoing experiences

Introduction

27. Analysing memories through video-interviews: a case study of post-war Italian cinemagoing, Daniela Treveri Gennari, Silvia Dibeltulo, Danielle Hipkins, and Catherine O'Rawe

28. Social sense and embodied sensibility: towards a historical phenomenology of filmgoing, Stephen Putnam Hughes

29. "It Pays to Plan 'em!": the newspaper movie directory and the paternal logic of mass onsumption, Paul S. Moore

30. Why young people still go to the movies: historical and contemporary cinemagoing audiences in Belgium, Liesbet Van de Vijver

31. For many but not for all: Italian film history and the circumstantial value of audience studies, Mariagrazia Fanchi