Film International nr 2003:4

Film International issue # 4
Film and Finance - A Special Issue (25 July)

Media Institutionality

an editorial by guest editor Toby Miller, Professor of Cultural Studies and Cultural Policy at the Department of Cinema Studies, New York University

Filmhäftet broke new ground over many years. Now Michael Tapper is doing a remarkable job with its successor, Film International. Both a magazine and a web site, Film International has quickly become a watchword for cosmopolitan coverage across the global screen-studies community. When Michael asked me to edit a special number of the magazine about cultural institutions, I was delighted.
Although it is somewhat unusual in the average glossy magazine, the special focus fits well with Film International’s admirably hybrid status between academia and the popular, and with the interdisciplinary way that many film professors work. One of the things that distinguishes screen studies from literary studies is that book fans and students often know nothing about the institutions that produce books, whereas media fans and students often know a great deal about the institutions that produce media texts. Nevertheless, the majority of writing on the screen is about meaning—the formal, stylistic, and thematic qualities of movies; the tropes of directors’ careers; the direction of national cinemas; the representation of gender and race on-screen; and so on. Here we are trying to do something different.
The issue asks readers to consider not just the artistic or political tenor of screen textuality, though those are both important, but to think as well about the constitutive work of screen policy. For a circuit of culture brings films to their audiences, and the best way to support an active cultural citizenry is to point out the who/what/when/where/why of the media—their policies. We examine here the big picture of film distribution (ownership and control) and its micro-manifestations (film posters). We consider numbers and charts, not just tropes and visions. We look at cultural domination, not just artistic expression. We criticize the idea of both national and regional cultures that do not emphatically address their actual viewerships/populations.
Our authors include both those who are well-established in the field and some emergent voices. They focus on Canada, India, the European Union, and the United States, so it is a very international issue. The link between their very diverse perspectives and problems is a commitment to understanding the total world of cinema—a site of labor, organization, law, government, and policy just as much as it is a site of textual meaning.

We hope you enjoy the result.

IN THIS ISSUE

FILM AND FINANCE

3 Editorial

4 Dissin’ the Distribs: Hollywood’s Questionable Distribution Policies
Have you wondered why Hollywood rules the the international cinema? Janet Wasko finds some answers by analyzing their business practices.

13 The Bombay Film Poster: The Journey from the Street to the Museum
Using posters as marketing tool has been and still is essential to the film industry. Ranjani Mazumdar gudes us throught a short history of the Indian film poster and its economic importance.

19 In the Shadows of Hollywood: Continuity and Change in Canada’s Film Industry
Two countries. Two film industries. Manjunath Pendakur writes about spectacular contrast in production and distribution between USA and Canada.

27 The Utah Version: Some Notes on the Relative Integrity of the Hollywood Product
Copyright protection and good public relations are usually considered as the two most important directives for MPAA. Jon Lewis can, however, tell some strange stories about what happens when they come at odds with each other.

30 Whereto the Cultural Exception? Pay-Television and the Future of European Film Finance
The fastest growing source of film financing is pay-TV. John McMurria maps this new territory and has some thoughts about what it will bring to cinema production.

Debate

36 Tales from the Crypt: A Debate between Torben Grodal and Christer Mattsson
In Film International # 3 Christer Matsson reviewed two books on Torben Grodal’s theories on film. Here is a short debate between the two starting with Torben Grodal’s rebuttal to Mattsson.

42 Films

Monterey Pop
Alice in Wonderland + The Year of the Sex Olympics
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
The King of Comedy
Tokyo Olympiad
The White Sheik

52 Books

John Ford’s “Stagecoach”
Indelible Shadows. Film and the Holocaust
The Red and the Blacklist
Shocking Cinema of the Seventies + Underground USA: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon

63 The Good, the Bad and the Gallo: Cannes # 56
Jan Lumholdt reports from the most frowned-upon Cannes competition in the short memory of man.

Filmhäftet

Publicerad: 2003-07-22

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