Film screening, book launch to be held Saturday at the Pickford

Kaveh Askari, an associate professor of English at Western Washington University, has had his book "Making Movies into Art: Picture Craft from the Magic Lantern to Early Hollywood" published by British Film Institute Publishing.

A screening of Maurice Tourneur’s rarely seen silent classic "Blue Bird" will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, at the Pickford Film Center to help launch the book.

Copies of the book will be available at the screening, and Askari will be signing copies afterward.

According to the official book description, "Making Movies into Art" explores how cinema’s emergence was grounded in theories of picture composition, craft and arts education – from magic lantern experiments in 1890s New York through to early Hollywood feature films in the 1920’s. Tourneur is among those discussed in the book.