Screening the Past began ten years ago and this issue celebrates that decade of publishing. In the first 21 issues we ran: 153 First Run articles; 15 Classics and Re-Runs articles; 7 guest-edited, special-themed issues with 12 guest editors; 416 reviews (mainly books), an average of 19.8 per issue; and work by 278 contributors (listed in the special “Tenth Anniversary” section of this issue). 96 colleagues contributed to this current issue, #22.

Ina Bertrand founded the journal. Ina and some of the people who worked to establish Screening the Past in its early days reflect on it in the “Memoirs from founders” section. Editorial Board members were invited to help celebrate the anniversary: Richard Maltby’s provocative “How Can Cinema History Matter More?” raises issues at the center of screen history and its work; Keyan Tomaselli and Harriet Margolis assess the state of film culture in their parts of the world; and Sam Rohdie has sent a poetic reflection on the past and pastness in the work of John Ford.

We invited colleagues from around the world to nominate the ten most significant/important/useful screen culture events of the decade – books, articles, institutions, websites, archives, DVDs, documentaries, whatever. The 59 submissions are reprinted in the “Field survey: the poll results” section; a tabulation of frequently mentioned items appears at the end of the section.

The First Run entries include Australian screen history – Jeannette Delamoir on women and airplanes in silent cinema, and Daniel Reynaud on what used to be called diachronic change in the presentation of a national archetype; on Asian screen studies – Julian Ward on cultural shifts in China as seen through Zhang Side, and Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim employing multiple research approaches to the contemporary Korean cinema and its Australian presence. Sira Hernández Corchete surveys the development of Spanish historical television documentaries. Holger Römers revisits textual nuances of Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln, and Jodi Brooks brings together Ralph Ellison, Louis Armstrong, and Sunset Boulevard in search of invisibility. The Römers essay was one of the prompts that led us to republish the essay by Ronald Abramson and Richard Thompson on Young Mr. Lincoln. We hope that the connections between these two essays will be productive for our readers.

This issue’s “Reviews” section opens with Jan-Christopher Horak’s special anniversary review essay devoted to the work Ina Bertrand, Bill Routt, and others have done over many years researching The Story of the Kelly Gang (Australia, 1906), arguably the first feature-length fiction film ever produced. The range of writers and topics in the remaining 29 reviews defies summary: see the table of contents.

This tenth anniversary issue is a time of reflection and also a time in which we can think about how we can move forward. Pressing practical concerns include upgrading our database/archives and, equally important, securing our future funding which is, at the moment, not in place. Our editorial policy will remain as it has been; within that framework we will work to present the best, most useful, and most important work we can. We invite responses from our readers for the guidance they provide. We would like to thank all of the contributors in this past decade; we look ahead to the next decade.

Anna Dzenis
Rick Thompson

Created on: Wednesday, 19 December 2007