Author and scholar Donald Crafton wrote Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898-1928, a defining work of early animation history. Yet with the exception of one example from a filmmaker much discussed in that book and especially his other Emile Cohl, Caricature, and Film, his picks range into the live action territory of editing innovations alongside the still-surviving tradition of trick films and actualities.

Donald also wrote on the transition from silent cinema to sound production in The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926-1931. Since retiring, he has written a play, Winsor and Gertie, that has been produced in Europe and the U.S, and which he has recently adapted as a feature-length screenplay.

Films and resources mentioned:

• The Lonely Villa (1909) - D.W. Griffith
• The Spider and the Butterfly (1909) - Georges Méliès
• A Trip to the White Seas Fisheries (1909) - Joe Rosenthal
• Dick Is Not Dead (1909) - unknown
• The Man in the Moon (1909) -  Étienne Arnaud and Émile Cohl
• The Scarlet Drop (1918) - John Ford
• The Adventures of Dollie (1908) - D.W. Griffith
• Hugo (2011) - Martin Scorsese
• Cyrano de Bergerac (1923) -  Augusto Genina
• Baron Munchausen’s Dream (1911) - Georges Méliès
• Slippery Jim (1909) - Segundo de Chomón
• Wild and Woolly (1917) - John Emerson
• Un Chien Andalou (1929) - Luis Buñuel
• Fantasmagorie (1908) - Émile Cohl
• Women Film Pioneers Project