The movie theater as an institutional space and framework of signification: Hale's Tours and film historiography

Through the examination of a specific film production and exhibition system, Hale's Tours, this essay examines the importance granted by film historians to traditional projection space as an institutional site. It demonstrates that, for these historians, any film projected outside this space was not "cinema" and thus had little or no connection to film history. The essay suggests reasons for the relative absence of Hale's Tours from synoptic film histories and enquires into the special relationship between viewer, image and space in this kind of entertainment.