This issue of animation: an interdisciplinary journal includes articles from two ends of the spectrum of international animation production. The first three are based in extensive archival research and primarily address Western animation from the late 19 th and early 20 th century, offering corrections, elaborations and new research on familiar works and directors. The last two, that take Japanese anime as their topics, use culturally specific approaches that embed these works in the cultures they were created in.We start in France: in '"This New Mode of Expression": The Idea of Animation in 1930s France', Kristian Moen locates and examines an underlying discourse in an interesting set of archival fragments that demonstrate a high regard for animation as an art form. This is not an isolated case: according to Naum Kleiman, Sergei Eisenstein began his notes for what became Eisenstein on Disney in 1940 (Leyda, 1988: xii), and Leyda's book includes an image dated 1930 of Eisenstein 'shaking hands' with Mickey Mouse. Working with French popular press and journal reviews of animation film, Moen reminds (and informs some of) us, that this regard was commonplace at the time, and that the reception history of animation is somewhat neglected. He argues for a (re-)consideration of animation history specifically together with the form's reception -and less so with it production contexts, technologies and personalities -towards developing a more culturally informed set of ideas about the distinctiveness of animation. Moen undertakes this himself by first discussing debates about medium specificity, to then establish his own stance in this debate in the ensuing focus on key facets of discourse around animation in France in the 1930s. He makes clear this period and national focus is an example for a wider argument he is making. A selection of critics' aesthetic commentaries and evaluations of animation help to establish an aesthetics in these writings, that Moen then extends to other art forms to establish elements of intermediality. His account contributes to wider debates on animation's history, its vernacular reception and its relation to other art forms.Also based in archival research, Donald Crafton and David L. Nathan's 'The Making and Re-making of Winsor McCay's Gertie (1914)' shows how close analysis and working with original animation artwork can reward the investigator(s). It also introduces a new resource in the study of one of the most famous early animation films: 'The Gertie Project', founded by Nathan. In this article, the authors are interested in discrepancies of the ending in various versions of McCay's film and his Vaudeville performance. By closely examining his original drawings, writings, materials and techniques, and through a digitally aided (re) construction, they are able to establish new evidence for and conclusions about McCay's working methods, influences and presentation formats. Informative graphs, illustrations and a wealth of additional contextual information about when, where and how McCay's p...

This article aims to flesh out how Stan VanDerBeek created what Time magazine in 1964 rather glibly described as ‘a curious chapter in the manual of animation’. The main focus is on his pre-computer painted and puppet animation and collage animation works. After considering relevant terminologies, the author explores VanDerBeek’s own writings to see how and why his artistic and cultural philosophy could be expressed using animation techniques. After a discussion of a stop-motion puppet film and a painted film, she introduces, via Modernist contexts of collage and photomontage, some of VanDerBeek’s many collage and cutout animation films, proposing how his visual neologisms bear comparison with James Joyce’s portmanteau technique. She then undertakes an aesthetic and socio-political analysis of his praxis within found footage genres and techniques, and suggests viewer strategies for watching his works. The article concludes by describing some of VanDerBeek’s manifold poetics and aesthetics as ‘a curious chapter’ within the continuum of political photomontage and independent animation production.

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is Professor and Head of MA Animation at the Royal College of Art London. She has published widely on animation and film, and is Editor of Animation: an interdisciplinary journal (Sage). Her research theme of Pervasive Animation positions animation as central to contemporary debates in visual culture, and as a primary driver of the digital shift and resulting changes in cultural metaphors. She is interested in the evolving relationship between media, creative industries and social change, She is also active as a curator, most recently Animated Wonderworlds, Museum of Design Zurich (2016).

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