Camera Man: Buster Keaton and the Dawn of Cinema with Dana Stevens

219 South 6th Street,Philadelphia PA 19106

07 February, 2022

Description

Film critic Carrie Rickey in conversation with Culture Gabfest host, Dana Stevens about her new book, “Camera Man" In this genre-defying work of cultural history, the chief film critic of Slate places comedy legend and acclaimed filmmaker Buster Keaton’s unique creative genius in the context of his time. Born the same year as the film industry in 1895, Buster Keaton began his career as the child star of a family slapstick act reputed to be the most violent in vaudeville. Beginning in his early twenties, he enjoyed a decade-long stretch as the director, star, stuntman, editor, and all-around mastermind of some of the greatest silent comedies ever made, including Sherlock Jr., The General, and The Cameraman. Even through his dark middle years as a severely depressed alcoholic finding work on the margins of show business, Keaton’s life had a way of reflecting the changes going on in the world around him. He found success in three different mediums at their creative peak: first vaudeville, then silent film, and finally the experimental early years of television. Over the course of his action-packed seventy years on earth, his life trajectory intersected with those of such influential figures as the escape artist Harry Houdini, the pioneering Black stage comedian Bert Williams, the television legend Lucille Ball, and literary innovators like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Samuel Beckett. In Camera Man, film critic Dana Stevens pulls the lens out from Keaton’s life and work to look at concurrent developments in entertainment, journalism, law, technology, the political and social status of women, and the popular understanding of addiction. With erudition and sparkling humor, Stevens hopscotches among disciplines to bring us up to the present day, when Keaton’s breathtaking (and sometimes life-threatening) stunts remain more popular than ever as they circulate on the internet in the form of viral gifs. Far more than a biography or a work of film history, Camera Man is a wide-ranging meditation on modernity that paints a complex portrait of a one-of-a-kind artist. About Dana Stevens: Dana Stevens is the film critic at Slate magazine and a co-host of the magazine's weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest. She has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic and Bookforum. She lives in New York City with her family; you can follow her on Twitter or Instagram at @thehighsign. This is her first book. About Carrie Rickey: Carrie Rickey was born in Los Angeles during the widescreen era of movies and bagged a couple degrees from the University of California, San Diego in the years surfers traded longboards for short. She moved to New York just in time to read the headline Ford to City: Drop Dead and decamped as tabloids thus immortalized the passing of Andy Warhol: Platinum Prince of Pop Dies. During her New York years she wrote art criticism for Artforum and Art in America, film criticism for the Village Voice and Film Comment and was a columnist for Mademoiselle. For 25 years she was film critic of The Philadelphia Inquirer where she reviewed everything from Room With a View to Shame, interviewed celebrities from Lillian Gish to Will Smith, and reported on technological breakthroughs from the rise of video to the introduction of movies on-demand. She has taught at various institutions including School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, is a popular speaker and has appeared frequently on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, MSNBC and CNN. About the Athenaeum The Athenaeum was established in 1814 as a subscription library, at a time when the free public library system did not exist and collections of books, available for reading or research, were still mostly limited to institutions, schools or colleges. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia nurtures curiosity in members and neighbors, strengthening community through learning and discourse. The Athenaeum was established in 1814 as a subscription library, at a time when the free public library system did not exist and collections of books, available for reading or research, were still mostly limited to institutions, schools or colleges. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia nurtures curiosity in members and neighbors, strengthening community through learning and discourse. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia is one of 16 membership libraries that collaborate through the Membership Libraries Group. Some, like the Charleston (est. 1748), New York Society (est. 1754), and Newport (est. 1741) libraries, date from the 18th Century.