The ‘raw nature’ of cinema: Rethinking technological histories of film through plant and animal materials in early celluloid manufacturing

Historically, the production of celluloid film stock – the first medium of cinema – relied on a range of plant and animal materials: cellulose from cotton, gelatin from animal hide, camphor from tree bark, etc. Recently, scholarly interest has turned to the processing of these agricultural “elements of cinema” in Europe and North America. Much less known are the supply chains that grew, reared, cultivated and transported them to celluloid-producing countries. Tracing their global movements will dramatically change how we understand the history and cartography of cinema and its entanglements with the living world, shifting the targets of analysis not only away from cultural centers like Hollywood, Paris and Berlin to manufacturing centers Rochester, Vincennes, and Wolfen, but even further to centers of agriculture, extraction and trade like Tamsui, Keelung, or Licata.