ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rise of the first “cinematographic study societies” in the 1910s and shows how the concerns of amateur science (experiential learning in an era of increasingly specialized and abstract knowledge) were crucial to their interest in cinema, which they helped to render meaningful as a medium of education. The chapter draws both on histories of science and histories of print publics to show how the first wave of film societies understood their mission in analogy to previous associations for popular learning (reading societies, amateur science, amateur photography). Several groups from Germany and Austria are discussed, with extended attention to the Kosmos Club for Artistic and Scientific Cinematography (founded 1912), which had its base in Vienna and a journal (Film und Lichtbild) from Stuttgart.
