DOMITOR is an international non-profit association for people interested in early cinema, from its beginnings to 1915. In other words, the cinema that existed before the disruptions of the first World War. The association was begun in October 1985 in Pordenone, Italy, during the festival Le Giornate del cinema muto, by five founding members Stephen Bottomore of the United Kingdom, Paolo Cherchi Usai of Italy, Andre Gaudreault of Canada, Tom Gunning of the United States, and Emmanuelle Toulet of France. The Founding Congress was held two years later, in October 1987, again in Pordenone at the annual silent film festival. The festival is the essential gathering place for people from all over the world who love silent movies and therefore it is practical for DOMITOR to continue to hold annual meetings there.
DOMITOR is not an acronym as you might think: it is the name that the father of the Lumiere brothers once proposed for their projector of motion pictures. In a way, the choice of that quirky name suggests the viewpoint of the founding members that so-called "primitive cinema" is not just a forerunner of the "real true cinema" that was to follow, as it was considered in the past, but was a period of many rich ideas about the new medium, some of which did not lead anywhere and others that are still worth considering. The association's purpose is to promote the growth of research in this little-explored area, through new methods, a variety of approaches and expertise in several fields, to encourage international cooperation, and the exchange of information, documents and ideas. DOMITOR maintains close contacts and relationships with FIAF, the International Federation of Film Archives, recognizing that the work of the worldÕs film archives for the last 50 years has made accessible a growing body of films and research materials in the realm of early cinema. In 1989 DOMITOR helped to organize symposiums for the Lisbon congress of FIAF on "Cataloging and Filmographic Research: Tracing the Past" and "Brighton, Ten Years After," a summary of the many developments in historiography that followed the groundbreaking FIAF Symposium on "Cinema 1900-1906" held in England in 1978.
The principle work of DOMITOR is to organize international symposiums on specific topics, alternating sites between North America and Europe, with simultaneous translation in French and English. The participants spend as much time looking at film as they do in discussion and when possible advance screenings are arranged to permit the speakers to prepare their papers. Early exhibition practice is one of the topics of study, and these symposiums have sometimes offered the recreation of early viewing experiences, such as a Passion Play in a church (the first conference), or with musical accompaniment, narrators, magic lantern shows, archival prints, etc. These symposiums have resulted in several bilingual publications:
(1) The first symposium, held in Quebec in June 1990, was recorded in An Invention of the Devil? Religion and Early Cinema /Une Invention du Diable? Cinema des premiers temps et religion, (Les Presses de l'Universite Laval, QuebectEditions Payot Lausanne, Switzerland, 1992).
(2) The second, held in Lausanne in 1992, was on the topic of Images Across Borders: 1895 1918/Cinema sans frontieres (Nuite Blanche, Quebec/Payot Lausanne, Switzerland, 1995).
(3) The third was held New York in June 1994, in celebration of the centennial, on Cinema at the Turn of Century/Le Cinema au tournant du siecle (Nuite Blanche, Quebec/Payot Lausanne, 1997). At this conference, musicologist Martin Marks achieved the superhuman feat of improvising a piano accompaniment for films lasting one minute or less, one after another, for two and a half days.
(4) The fourth international symposium was held in Paris in December 1996 on the topic of Pathe, the largest and most international of production companies after the turn of the century, publication now in progress.
The fifth will be on sound in early cinema, and will take place in Washington, D. C., in 1998. DOMITOR has published a bibliography of publications on the early cinema written by its members: International Bibliography on early cinema/Bibliographic internationale du cinema des premiere temps, edited by Emmanuelle Toulet in 1987, later updated and enlarged by Elena Dagrada in a second edition which was published in 1995. The impressive number of entries demonstrates the contributions made by DOMITOR's members to the history of the period and provides valuable references for researchers. DOMITOR publishes a bulletin for its members that provides news of conferences, events and publications, and an exchange of research requests and information. Memberships are individual and institutional, open to anyone with a serious interest in early cinema. As of 1995, there were about 130 individual members from 22 countries, including scholars,historians, archivists, researchers and collectors, as well as 7 film archives. The DOMITOR Secretariat, 6152 Vilas Hall, 821 University Avenue, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, can provide further details.