Film Policy In A Globalised Cultural Economy

The past two decades have witnessed major changes in film industries worldwide in response to both economic globalisation and technological developments. The dominant position of Hollywood movies in the global film market has remained largely uncontested, but Hollywood itself has become increasingly international in its operations whilst ‘regional’ screen industries such as those in East Asia and in the Indian subcontinent have (re-)emerged and developed new forms of collaboration. The advent of digital technologies has also transformed the content of films and the ways in which they are made and consumed. Such changes, in turn, have posed new economic and cultural challenges for policy-makers around the world and led to a degree of rethinking of how film policy objectives are to be conceived, defined and implemented. This collection brings together a range of international scholars from the USA, Europe and Asia to consider how film policy has responded to the various economic, technological and political shifts shaping the global film industry; and to identify the many tensions between global and local, economic and cultural, and public and private policy objectives that have been the result of these changes. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Policy.

Film Policy is the first comprehensive overview of the workings of the international film industry. The authors examine film cultures and film policy across the world, explaining why Hollywood cinema dominates the global film market, and the effects of the rise of television and video on the international industry. In a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia, the authors explore the relationship between Hollywood cinema product and national film cultures, and trace the development of international and national film policies, looking at issues of financing, regulation, protectionism and censorship.

This book analyses the Korean film industry emergence and development in a global business and economic perspective. This is one of the first books to compare the film policies and industries of the world’s six largest film industries – featuring Korea as the central character – with the aim of defining the contours of what constitutes an effective film policy. It presents many cases showing that, contrary to what is often believed, an economically sound policy is a good instrument for achieving desired cultural goals. It uses a set of analytical tools – borrowed from the economic analysis of international trade policies – to provide a rich harvest of new, rigorous, and often unexpected results on the effectiveness of the existing film policies. The implications found in this book are relevant not only for Korea, but for all other countries that wish to foster or enhance the competitiveness of their film industries. This book will be of interest to a wide spectrum of scholars interested in cultural studies – media and cultural specialists, political scientists, sociologists, historians – in addition to business analysts and economists specialized in cultural economics. As this book focuses on film policies and how to improve them, it will also appeal to policymakers, business figures, public relations officials, and staff from international organizations working on the film industry.

The Film Studio sheds new light on the evolution of global film production, highlighting the role of film studios worldwide. The authors explore the contemporary international production environment, identifying various types of film studios and investigating the consequences for Hollywood, international film production, and the studio locations. Visit our website for sample chapters!

This book explores the complex interplay of culture and economics in the context of Philippine cinema. It delves into the tension, interaction, and shifting movements between mainstream and independent filmmaking, examines the film distribution and exhibition systems, and investigates how existing business practices affect the sustainability of the independent sector. This book addresses the lack or absence of Asian representation in film distribution literature by supplying the much-needed Asian context and case study. It also advances the discourse of film distribution economy by expounding on the formal and semi-formal film distribution practices in a developing Asian country like the Philippines, where the thriving piracy culture is considered as ‘normal,’ and which is commonly depicted and discussed in existing literature. As such, this will be the first book that looks into the specifics of the Philippine film distribution and exhibition system and provides a historical grounding of its practices.

This volume addresses issues revolving around the production of mediated cultural products across borders. More specifically, the authors consider cross-border cultural production in the film and television industries and how it affects and is affected by media centers, and, more recently, established production locations. The film and television industries have long been recognized as playing important economic, political and cultural roles. And while it could be argued that, historically, these forms of cultural production often have been international endeavors, the choice of production sites has become an especially contentious issue during the last few decades as global production has expanded. While some factions, notably from the US film and television industries, refer to this issue as "runaway production," this book takes a much broader look at the implications and consequences of this phenomenon. Basically, cross-border production involves the expansion of production away from traditional centers, whether to other countries or to other locations within the same country. Thus, this study covers a wide range of issues involving economic and political considerations, as well as creative and aesthetic decision-making.

This work explores the global-local interplay through the case study of the People's Republic of China's encounter with global Hollywood from the mid-1990s to 2013. It analyzes the changing role of the Chinese state and its evolving cultural policy; investigates the intertwined relationships among the Chinese state, global capital, and local dynamics; and examines the impact of this encounter on the Chinese film sector's radical transformation from a Soviet-style planned economy and state ownership model to a market-oriented cultural industry.

In cinema studies today, rarely do we find a direct investigation into the culture of capitalism and how it has been refracted and fabricated in global cinema production under neoliberalism. However, the current economic crisis and the subsequent Wall Street bailout in 2008 have brought about a worldwide skepticism regarding the last four decades of economic restructuring and the culture that has accompanied it. In this edited volume, an international ensemble of scholars looks at neoliberalism, both as culture and political economy, in the various cinemas of the world. In essays encompassing the cinemas of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the United States the authors outline how the culture and subjectivities engendered by neoliberalism have been variously performed, contested, and reinforced in these cinemas. The premise of this book is that the cultural and economic logic of neoliberalism, i.e., the radical financialization and market-driven calculations, of all facets of society are symptoms best understood by Marxist theory and its analysis of the central antagonisms and contradictions of capital. Taking a variety of approaches, ranging from political economy, ideological critique, the intersection of aesthetics and politics, social history and critical-cultural theory, this volume offers a fresh, broad-based Marxist analysis of contemporary film/media. Topics include: the global albeit antagonistic nature of neoliberal culture; the search for a new aesthetic and documentary language; the contestation between labor and capital in cultural producion; the political economy of hollywood, and questions of gender, sexuality, and the nation state in relation to neoliberalism.