Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War
Alice Lovejoy
University of California Press (August 2025)

How film became a weapon whose chemistry irrevocably shaped our world today 

It’s publisher correctly points out that in Tales of Militant Chemistry, Alice Lovejoy examines “the untold story of film as a chemical cousin to poison gas and nuclear weapons, shaped by centuries of violent extraction…The story comes into focus during World War II at the factories of Tennessee Eastman Kodak, where photographic giant Kodak produced the rudiments of movie magic. Not far away, at Oak Ridge, Kodak was also enriching uranium for the bomb that fell on Hiroshima.” Meanwhile, Agfa grew entangled with Nazi Germany’s machinery of war. After 1945, Kodak’s film factories stood at the front lines of a new, colder war, as their photosensitive products became harbingers of the dangers of nuclear fallout.”

Lovejoy suggests that several of the “tales of militant chemistry” could be viewed as “a parable about chemistry and the people and things it touches, about its inherently global scale, and about its materials, which changed into myriad things with just as many, sometimes irreconcilable, meanings. In fact, if we alter the details only a little, we could turn it into a story of film.”

Frankly, I had no idea about the nature and extent of chemistry’s cultural importance to military resources, strategies, and applications. More specifically, the importance of flammable film (cellulose nitrate) and nonflammable film (cellulose acetate). Lovejoy focuses on two companies, Tennessee Eastman Gelatine and Actien-Gesellschaft für Anilin Fabrikation (a.k.a. Agfa). These two  corporate giants, Eastman/Kodak (in Kingsport and Oak Ridge, Tennessee) and Agfa (in Wolfen, Germany), “are at the heart of this book.” Indeed, they are.

Lovejoy is a consummate historian (check out her research resources listed on Pages 205-228) as well as an equally talented raconteur of the various tales in this volume. Her narrative is lively and eloquent, her cast of characters is memorable, and she addresses all manner of issues as well as conflicts that are central to the complex culture of the “century of war” that she examines.

Here is a brief excerpt from the Introduction that suggests the thrust and flavor of her analytical skills:

“Borrowing from Italian author Primo Levi’s 1975 book The Periodic Table, we could call these stories ‘tales of militant chemistry.’

“Levi is a helpful guide. During the years of Tennessee Eastman’s and Agfa Wolfen’s ‘militant chemistry,’ he studied and worked as a prisoner and forced laborer in Auschwitz. The Periodic Table is a chronicle of this period, each chapter a vignette named for a chemical element: silver, uranium, zinc, tin, and so on. Silver and uranium play roles in this book as well. So do substances like cotton, gelatin, and wood, which, because they aren’t elements, Levi doesn’t write about, but which the assembly lines  at Tennessee Eastman’s and Agfa Wolfen made into film, and into rayon and plastics, and weapons.”

Thank you, Alice Lovejoy, for this brilliant contribution to knowledge leadership.

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Here are two other suggestions while you are reading Tales of Militant Chemistry. First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to the especially informative Introduction (not all introductions are) as well as to the remarks in the paragraph that concludes each of the five chapters.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.

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Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out aforementioned Primo Levi  and his classic work, The Periodic Table: A Memoir (Everyman’s Library “Contemporary Classics Series”), published by Schocken in 1995. Primo Levi was born on July 31, 1919 in Turin, Italy. He pursued a career in chemistry, and spent the early years of World War II as a research chemist in Milan. Upon the German invasion of northern Italy, Levi, an Italian Jew, joined an anti-fascist group and was captured and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. He was able to survive the camp, due in part to his value to the Nazis as a chemist. After the war ended, Levi did chemistry work in a Turin paint factory while beginning his writing career. His 1985, largely autobiographical work, The Periodic Table, cemented his world fame. Ironically and tragically, despite his surviving Auschwitz, Primo Levi appears to have died by suicide, in Turin on April 11, 1987.