The Geneva Historical Society is now Historic Geneva. Same mission, new name.
Speaker Shares Story of Ithaca Movie Innovators
Geneva, N.Y.: Historic Geneva's final program of the 2021 Fall Lecture Series on innovation will be “The Wharton Brothers and The Magic of Early Cinema,” Thursday, November 18 at 7 p.m. This online program will be presented by Barbara Tepa Lupack, with an introduction by Diana Riesman, Executive Director of the Wharton Studio Musuem in Ithaca.
Brothers Ted and Leo Wharton, considered “masters of the serial,” were among cinema’s most prolific and pioneering silent filmmakers. Their profitable and influential productions included The Exploits of Elaine and The Mysteries of Myra, which starred such popular performers as Pearl White, Irene Castle, Francis X. Bushman, and Lionel Barrymore. Working from the independent film studio that they established in Renwick Park in Ithaca, New York, the Whartons expanded the possibilities of the serial motion picture and defined many of its conventions. Weaving contemporary events and scientific and technological innovations into their productions, they introduced sensational techniques and character types that are still being employed by producers and directors more than a century later. And, for a few years during the 1910s, they succeeded in turning their adopted town of Ithaca into Hollywood on Cayuga.
Barbara Tepa Lupack, former professor of English at St. John’s University and Wayne State College and Academic Dean at SUNY/Empire State, has written extensively on American literature, film, and culture. She is the author of more than twenty-five books—including Silent Serial Sensations: The Wharton Brothers and The Magic of Early Cinema (Cornell University Press, 2020). She has served as a New York State Public Scholar and held a number of fellowships, including a Fulbright in Poland and France.
Diana Riesman is Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Wharton Studio Museum. The Museum is committed to preserving and celebrating Ithaca's role in early American moviemaking. Wharton Studio Museum is the founding member of the Finger Lakes Film Trail, a collaboration launched in 2018 between the George Eastman Museum, the Case Research Lab/Cayuga Museum, and WSM.
This lecture will be presented online only through Zoom and advance registration is required. To register, participants should visit the program event page at historicgeneva.org. The necessary login information will be sent to registrants via email 24 hours prior to the program. For any problems with registration or to register by phone, call the Historic Geneva office at 315-789-5151. Registrations must be complete before 12:00 noon, November 18, the day of the program.
This program is supported in part by the Samuel B. Williams fund for programs in the Humanities and is free and open to the public. For more information about the lecture, call the Historic Geneva office at 315-789-5151 or visit historicgeneva.org.
Historic Geneva, formerly the Geneva Historical Society, tells the stories of Geneva, New York at the Geneva History Museum, Rose Hill Mansion, and Johnston House, and online at historicgeneva.org. Historic Geneva's offices are at 543 South Main Street, Geneva, NY.
In Brief
Event
"The Wharton Brothers and The Magic of Early Cinema"
A Lecture by Barbara Tepa Lupack
Date/Time
Thursday,
November 18, 2021
7pm
Admission
Free
Location
Online program
