"The Risk Environment of Small-Nation Filmmaking"

2012

The language of risk is common coin these days, informing virtually all areas of our lives. Parent/teacher discussions, whether in Asia or the West, make reference to learner profiles, and these often include the idea of being a "risk-taker." Thus, for example, a child may be encouraged proudly to report that the recent class excursion with Outward Bound allowed her to meet one of her learning targets, which is to become "more of a risk-taker." Discourses related to health, whether journalistic or medical, draw attention to long-term risks accompanying lifestyle choices. Phenomena such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), climate change, and the most recent financial meltdown all offer opportunities to reflect on the extent to which life in the 21 st century is shaped by global risks, by the threat of different kinds of harm, some of them with remote originating causes. The ease with which many of us "speak" the language of risk is itself an indication of the extent to which highly sophisticated studies of risk, by economists, sociologists, medical professionals, among many others, have been absorbed into the language of everyday life. That risk should be a pervasive feature of contemporary life is anything but surprising. As Peter L. Bernstein argues persuasively, in his intriguing study entitled Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, "The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before

Corporeality in Early Cinema: Viscera, Skin, and Physical Form

What did it mean to "work" in the motion-picture industry during its first decades? And what were the risks associated with film labor? From the outset, the laboring body proved central to the cinematic experience, both on-screen and off. One of the most visible workers was the actor, the performing body duly registered by a newly minted medium predicated on indexicality. Discussions of early screen acting often noted the arduous nature of film performance, especially in "body genres" such as slapstick comedy or the numerous variants of early action films.1 The thrill of "body genres" that required scenes of physical mayhem to stage comedic threats or that showcased spectacular feats of physical daring was reinforced by "real" stories about film stars who leaped from trains, fell off bridges, and cozied up to wild animals in the name of screen acting. Aside from the pleasurable spectacle of danger, the visceral appeal of actors at risk was enhanced by their flagrant disregard for social conventions predicated on bodily propriety. Indeed, filmmaking's perilous physicality-its comic pratfalls and daring stunts-helped define early film's excitement and appeal even as it tied certain genres and performers to working-class identity and culture. Strategies to manage and contain these different dangers helped define the parameters of the industry's uplift movement from 1907 to 1915, perhaps most clearly in the promotion of cinema's educational potential and in the gentrification of exhibition spaces and social practices.2 The discourse of danger, then, broadly encompasses the film industry's development-from the moral dangers of screen content to the licentious temptations of darkened theaters, and from the financial risks of film producing to the very real dangers of flammable nitrate. Danger as a fantasy and as a material effect establishes a narrative logic for the film industry, placing risk management at the center of its industrial expansion in the form of problems to be resolved and surmounted by filmmakers, reformers, and bureaucrats alike. Danger also made good copy. A 1915 cartoon for Motion Picture Magazine depicts a hapless would-be hero whose misguided attempt to

The Nordic Journal of Cultural Policy, 2019

This article examines approaches to cultural diversity in a global- local axis. Can one talk about local cultural diversity in a film industry that is increasingly global? Cultural diversity is a goal in European film policy and an important rationale behind the support of European films. Geographical location is a key factor when discussing filmmaking because of the assumption that film and television production at different places represents diversity and therefore contributes to democracy and varied representations. Still, few studies examine whether filmmaking in the peripheries does, or can, contribute to diversity in film. Using Norway as a case, interviews with people in four companies located outside the capital were conducted to discuss diversity and the geographical dimension of filmmaking. The article argues that the companies contribute to diversity because of a commitment to shoot regionally, and because they use local film workers and talents. The companies act in a glocal context where they focus on the national and/or regional in order to get public funding, but projects that are too place- or cultural specific in content are usually not interesting to an international audience. They choose a hybridisation strategy, using local places to tell universal stories

University of Toronto Quarterly, 2010

New Political Economy, 2018

This paper seeks to explain why Hollywood’s dominant firms are narrowing the scope of creativity in the contemporary period (1980–2015). The largest distributors have sought to prevent the art of filmmaking and its related social relations from becoming financial risks in the pursuit of profit. Major filmed entertainment, my term for the six largest distributors, must discount expected future earnings to present prices with the forward-looking logic of capitalisation; and uncertainty about where creativity in cinema is going can produce financial uncertainty about the future earning potential of new film projects. Conversely, a degree of confidence in the expected future earnings of Hollywood cinema can increase when the art of filmmaking and broader social world of mass culture are ordered by capitalist power [Nitzan, J. and Bichler, S., 2009. Capital as power: a study of order and creorder. New York: Routledge]. For the period of 1980–2015, major filmed entertainment lowered its risk relative to the period before, 1960–79. This historical process of risk reduction is the effect of major filmed entertainment making the wide-release strategy (a.k.a., saturation booking) more predictable through an aggressive implementation of the blockbuster style and the high concept standard.

Media Practice and Education

New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 2007

Who would expect that during these three days, from the small, picturesque town of St. Andrews in Scotland, one would be able to travel, with the power of words and moving images, to such places as Iran, Japan, New Zealand, the Middle East, Canada, Denmark and so on, to all these places that might be considered to be at the periphery of the world? But what is the periphery? And what is the centre? This question was frequently raised throughout the discussions although no definite, clear answer was reached. The centre assumes we already know it, as John Caughie put it, the periphery always explains itself to the centre. The borders are always shifting and this division tends to be only a schema; a dangerous schema as Bill Marshall maintains, but one that has sparked some heated debates. The first thing that comes to mind when we speak of peripheral cinema is minor cinemas and small nations (such as Denmark, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand), indigenous cinemas (the cinema of the Maori in New Zealand, of the aboriginals in Australia), non-Western cinemas and those that subvert traditions. Broadly speaking American cinema, and Hollywood cinema in particular, is situated at the centre because it dominates the market, while the periphery struggles to maintain itself through cultural policies to increase production and audience attendance. (Kristian Fielgeson highlighted the policies implemented by European countries in order to protect their film industries while Duncan Petrie mentioned the example of the Film Commission in New Zealand.) But the periphery is not confined to national borders. Collaboration between small nations that have a feeling of shared culture is a recent phenomenon, defined by Mette Hjort as 'homophilic trasnationalism' that permits competition with larger and stronger cinemas while allowing a greater sense of freedom from production constraints and less risk in experimentation. Furthermore, even within the national, a term that perhaps indicates the centre, we can find the peripheral, internal peripheries, undercurrents in the image system, as Rod Stoneman argues in relation to Irish cinema. The use of digital technology (video) and the Internet have facilitated this. Contributor details Fani Golemi is a Ph.D. student at the University of Bristol. The subject of her research is Iranian Cinema seen through a socio-political and psychoanalytic perspective. Contact: Fani Golemi, (From October 07

2007

2021

At the end of March 2020, COVID-19 forced many film productions to pause. The pandemic continues to have a huge impact on the film sector. Although many countries and film institutions provide measures in order to help productions continue in safety, the question remains as to what will become of cinema in years to come. We talked at length with Professor Jeremi Szaniawski on the subject COVID-19 and filmmaking. Professor Szaniawski is an Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has edited, among others, the volumes The Global Auteur: The Politic of Authorship in 21st Century Cinema (with Seung-hoon Jeong, Bloomsbury, 2016) and the forthcoming Fredric Jameson and Film Theory: Marxism, Allegory, and Geopolitics in World Cinema (with Keith Wagner and Michael Cramer, Rutgers, Rutgers University Press, 2021).