Paul Flaig, Lecturer in Film Studies at University of St Andrews, wrote a stellar synthesis of disciplines with his new book Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed. While it clearly deals with a later period than 1909, he still works German and American (and French!) comedy into his picks, in addition to a sound novelty and an actuality with a connection to Franz Kafka.

Paul is also the co-editor, with Katherine Groo, of New Silent Cinema and co-director, with Dora Osborne, of the German Screen Studies Network (GSSN). His writing has appeared in many journals and edited collections, including Cinema Journal, Screen, Camera Obscura, animation, and Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (JCMS).

Films and resources mentioned:

• Klebolin Sticks to Everything (1909) - Heinrich Bolten-Baeckers
• Those Awful Hats (1909) - D.W. Griffith
• The Happy Microbes (1909) - Émile Cohl
• What Is a Flag (1909) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• First International Competition for Airplanes in Brescia (1909) - unknown
• Rain (1929) - Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens
• Good Glue Sticks (1907) - Georges Méliès
• A Sticky Woman (1906) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895) - Louis Lumière
• At the Crossroads of Life (1908) - D.W. Griffith
• Miller’s Crossing (1990) - Joel and Ethan Coen
• Fantasmagorie (1908) - Émile Cohl
• Brains Repaired (1911) - Émile Cohl
• The Yawner (1907) - Segundo de Chomón
• Princess Nicotine; or, the Smoke Fairy (1909) - J. Stuart Blackton
• Daddy-Long-Legs (1919) - Marshall Neilan
• Original Films of Frank B. Gilbreth (1910-1924) - Frank B. Gilbreth
• Bad Film Histories: Ethnography and the Early Archive - Katherine Groo
• “Women's Hats and Silent Film Spectatorship: Between Ostrich Plume and Moving Image” - Maggie Hennefeld
• Emile Cohl, Caricature, and Film - Donald Crafton
• Kafka Goes to the Movies DVD set
• Kafka Goes to the Movies - Hanns Zischler
• Motion Study: A Method for Increasing the Efficiency of the Workman - Frank Gilbreth