INTRODUCTION: Provenance and Early Cinema: From Preservation and Collection to Circulation and Repurposing

The exploration of provenance as a concept and method for early cinema studies marks both a critical return to origins and a vital and generative step forward. The very founding of Domitor in 1985 was the result of an important return to the archive. The archival reassessment of specific film prints and collections has brought with it profound historical insights into the chosen modes, styles, intermedial practices, and cultural investments of early cinema. As a practice, this has fostered a bottom-up approach to film history based on archival research and implicitly rooted in the provenance of filmic objects. A concept