ABSTRACT
In his Menus for Movieland, Richard Abel describes the local newspaper as “a treasure trove of discursive material on the promotion, exhibition and reception of the movies, material that still remains relatively unexamined” (2015: 2). Indeed, for over a hundred years, from the 1890s until the late 2000s when online information service on local entertainments became predominant, local newspapers were cinemagoers’ main source of information on film screenings. The daily press worked as the interface between local audiences and local cinemas: advertisements taken out by cinema owners provided readers with useful information on film programs and from around 1913 film criticism lent a helpful hand in deciding which films to view, while background articles mirrored public debates on cinema-related questions.
