Laura Horak, Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University, is the author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema. Therefore, most of the conversation addresses the transgression, or lack thereof, of films that depicted such changes in dress, a rich topic represented by four of her five picks.

David Morton, Lecturer at the University of Central Florida, is the author of Motion Picture Paradise: A History of Florida’s Film and Television Industry. With this expertise in mind, the opening of the conversation covers the American film industry’s halting migration to the southern state, but moves on to American migrations to other locations and censored films.

Ned Thanhouser is president of Thanhouser Company Film Preservation and grandson of film pioneers Gertrude and Edwin Thanhouser. It makes sense, then, that he and Tristan discuss the founding of his family’s studio, which released its first film in 1910, but they also move on to Ned’s picks of classic literature adaptations and controversy.

The start of the 1910s doesn’t quite immediately usher in the cinematic measurement that would come to rule the decade: the feature film. But proto-forms of what would become the narrative standard arise in 1910, and otherwise, exciting images, narrative experiences, and affecting displays of historical milieu can be found in the productions of the year.