Small Cinemas In Global Markets

Small Cinemas in Global Markets addresses aspects such as identity, revisiting the past, internationalized genres, new forms of experimental cinema, markets and production, as well as technological developments of alternative small screens that open new perspectives into small cinema possibilities. Small and big markets for small industries reveal an unimagined diversification of the cultural product and consequently the need to analyze the impact at local, regional, and global levels. Much needed to continue and expand the existing scholarship in the field, this volume is based on research by authors who approach their subject from Western theoretical perspectives with a professional (mostly native) knowledge of the language, cultural realities, and film industry practices. It covers aspects from fifteen different countries, including Bolivia, Brazil, China (Hong Kong), Croatia, East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda), Greece, Indonesia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Morocco, and the United States. Since both film and documentary distribution from certain areas of the globe on international markets remains problematic, it is important for the academic field to discuss and circulate them as much as possible, and to create the basis for further exploration. Documenting and reflecting on the role, state, and reception of the film industry provides scholarly understanding to the industry’s wide range of seemingly chaotic technological transformations.

World Cinema: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to film industries across the globe. From the 1980s onwards, new technologies and increased globalization have radically altered the landscape in which films are distributed and exhibited. Films are made from the large-scale industries of India, Hollywood, and Asia, to the small productions in Bhutan and Morocco. They are seen in multiplexes, palatial art cinemas in Cannes, traveling theatres in rural India, and on millions of hand-held mobile screens. Authors Deshpande and Mazaj have developed a method of charting this new world cinema that makes room for divergent perspectives, traditions, and positions, while also revealing their interconnectedness and relationships of meaning. In doing so, they bring together a broad range of issues and examples—theoretical concepts, viewing and production practices, film festivals, large industries such as Nollywood and Bollywood, and smaller and emerging film cultures—into a systemic yet flexible map of world cinema. The multi-layered approach of this book aims to do justice to the depth, dynamism, and complexity of the phenomenon of world cinema. For students looking to films outside of their immediate context, this book offers a blueprint that will enable them to transform a casual encounter with a film into a systematic inquiry into world cinema.

This book rethinks the study of European Cinema in a way that centres on students and their needs, in a comprehensive volume introducing undergraduates to the main discourses, directions and genres of twenty-first-century European film. Importantly, this collection is the first of its kind to apply a transversal approach to European Cinema, bringing together the East and the West, while providing a broad picture of key trends, aesthetics, genres, national identities, and transnational concerns. Lewis and Canning’s collection effectively addresses some of the most pressing questions in contemporary European film, such as ecology, migration, industry, identity, disability, memory, auteurship, genre, small cinemas, and the national and international frameworks which underpin them. Combining accessible original research with a thorough grounding in recent histories and contexts, each chapter includes key definitions, reflective group questions, and a summative case study. Overall, this book makes a strong contribution to our understanding of recent European Cinema, making it an invaluable resource for lecturers and students across a variety of film-centred modules.

This book examines the emergence of small cinemas of the Andes, covering digital peripheries in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. The volume critically assesses heterogeneous audiovisual practices and subaltern agents, elucidating existing tensions, contradictions and resistances with respect to established cinematic norms. The reason these small cinematic sectors are of interest is twofold: first, the film markets of the aforementioned countries are often eclipsed by the filmmaking giants of Mexico, Brazil and Argentina; second, within the Andean countries these small cinemas are overshadowed by film board-backed cinemas whose products are largely designed for international film festivals.

This book analyzes Hungarian and Romanian cinema employs a film historical overview to merge the study of small national cinemas with film genre theory and cultural theory.

Allusions to Shakespeare haunt our contemporary culture in a myriad of ways, whether through brief references or sustained intertextual engagements. Shakespeare’s plays and motifs have been appropriated in fragmentary forms onstage and onscreen since motion pictures were invented in 1893. This collection of essays extends beyond a US-UK axis to bring together an international group of scholars to explore Shakespearean appropriations in unexpected contexts in lesser-known films and television shows in India, Brazil, Russia, France, Australia, South Africa, East-Central Europe and Italy, with reference to some filmed stage works.

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.