Dr Merritt teaches courses in national cinemas, animation, film styles and
genre, specializing in topics that cross disciplinary lines. His current research interests include silent film, Japanese film [particularly Ozu Yasajiro], D.W. Griffith, animation, film and children’s lore, French Film, German Film, and Disney’s 1930s work.
Selected Publications
Co-author (with J.B. Kaufman), Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Walt Disney Cartoon Series, La Cineteca del Friuli/ Smithsonian Press (in press, fall 2004).
Contributor, Fifty entries, averaging 3,500 words each on fifty Griffith Biographs for The Griffith Project, Vols. 1-8, Paolo Cherchi Usai, ed. London: BFI Publishing, 1999-2003.
“Rescued From a Perilous Nest: Griffith’s Escape from Theatre into Film,”
revised and expanded for Theater and Film: A Comparative Anthology, ed. Bert
Cardullo, Yale University Press, 2003.
“Nickelodeon Theaters, 1905-1914: Building an Audience for the Movies” has also been excerpted [pp. 83-91, 95-98, 102] for inclusion in Exhibition, The Film Reader, ed. Ina Rae Hark. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 21-30.
Writer and narrator for “D.W. Griffith Years of Discovery: 1909-1913″
[3 hour analyses of twenty-four Biographs]. DVD produced by Film Preservation
Associates, 2002.
Writer and narrator of “Eisenstein and Prokofiev,” introduction to Alexander Nevsky, DVD (Criterion, 2000).
Writer and narrator for “Understanding D.W. Griffith,” [analyses of The Birth
of a Nation, Intolerance, and Way Down East] CD-ROM produced by Brian Stonehill,Pomona College, 1998.
“L’uomo che rubo ‘La Gioconda’ Introduzione”, “The Man Who Stole the
Gioconda: Introduction,” Griffithiana 64 (Ottobre, 1998), 50-59.
“100 Jahre Filmmusik: Paul Dessau, Die Alice-Komödien, und [Ladislaw
Starewicz’] Die Wunderuhr,” 35pp booklet in German, French, and English to
accompany world premiere recording of Alice Comedies/ The Magic Clock, Paul
Dessau’s music for silent films directed by Walt Disney and Ladislaw Starewicz.
BMG-Deutchland Radio-RCA Victor, 1996.
“Recharging Nevsky: Tracking the Eisenstein-Prokofiev War Horse,” Film
Quarterly 48 (Winter 1994-5), 34-45.
Productions
Producer and Director, “The Great Nickelodeon Show,” a ninety-minute recreation of a turn-of-the-century film exhibition, with live acts and illustrated lectures. This program, originally created for Film 50 in Spring 2000, has since then been performed at the Castro, the San Rafael Film Center, the Telluride Film Festival, the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Giornate de Cinema Muto in Italy. Most recently it has played at Emory University in Atlanta and is scheduled for the Aspen Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
“UPA and the Selling of ’50s Cool,” lecture and film program presented at
Aspen ShortsFest, Aspen, Colorado, 31 March 2004.
Moderator and co-organizer, Talk Cinema for three seasons, San Francisco,
Fall 2002-2003.
Guest Curator, Walt Disney Retrospective 1921-1937, Cinematheque Francaise,
16 Dec 1998-15 January 1999
Guest Curator, “Fashion & Film,” sponsored by the Goethe-Institüt, San
Francisco, 12 Nov-5 Dec 1996
Co-writer [uncredited] and senior consultant, D.W. Griffith: Father of Film,
three one- hour television broadcasts directed and co-written by Kevin Brownlow
and David Gill, and co-produced by American Masters [US] and Thames Television
[UK], broadcast PBS March 1993.
Please join in welcoming Dr. Merritt to the Society with our greeting to members:
“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”