‘A more permanent world’

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-226
Author(s):  
Jonathan Stubbs
Keyword(s):  
Marshall Plan ◽  
American Film ◽  
Local Production ◽  
Unsuccessful Attempt ◽  
Tax Incentive ◽  
Runaway Production ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Quo Vadis ◽  
Second World

This chapter traces the long production history of Quo Vadis at MGM, beginning in the mid-1930s and including an unsuccessful attempt to bring Sienkiewicz’s novel to the screen during the Second World War. It examines the predominantly economic factors which led to the film being made as a ‘runaway’ production, initially bound for locations in Italy and studios in London but ultimately realized as an all-Italian production based at the revived Cinecittà studio. MGM’s need to repatriate revenues which had been temporarily blocked by the Italian government was instrumental in this decision: their money could not be withdrawn from Italy directly, but it could be invested in local production and then exported back to America as materials for a film. This chapter also considers the legacy of Quo Vadis, both in Italy and America. The film’s success not only propelled a cycle of highly profitable epic movies set in the ancient world but also established a model for relocating big-budget film production overseas. Giulio Andreotti later claimed that the film ‘did more for Italy than the Marshall Plan’, but others have been less sanguine about the industrial restructuring which occurred in its wake. More than sixty years later, overseas production (buttressed by an array of tax-incentive schemes) remains a key element in the American film and TV industry’s global reach. In this context, the transnational production history of Quo Vadis is perhaps more relevant than ever.

How to Write Adaptation History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lev
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Film Production ◽  
American Film ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Auteur Theory ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Made In

The scholarship on American film adaptations is surprisingly ahistorical, neglecting the institutional and production history of Hollywood film. Chapter 38 attempts a more historical approach. Concentrating on the 1930s, it discusses how stories were chosen, what kinds of stories were chosen, and how stories were shaped in the film production process, identifying the screenwriter and the supervising producer as key contributors to adaptation. Statistical tables provide information on the percentage of novel, play, and short story adaptations made in each year between 1931 and 1940. Critiquing both the auteur theory and Robert Stam’s intertextuality for their lack of interest in production history, the essay calls for more archival research and more attention to the production process.

scholarly journals Bringing the Battle to Britain: Band of Brothers and Television Runaway Production in the UK

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-333
Author(s):  
Simone Knox
Keyword(s):  
Professional Experience ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Television Production ◽  
Tax Relief ◽  
Runaway Production ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contractual Agreements ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This article explores the development and pre-production history of the 2001 HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. It does so via a combination of original archive research (conducted at the BFI Reuben Library) and interviews with several industry figures with relevant professional experience, including John Barclay, the current Head of Recorded Media for the UK trade union Equity, and Roger Harrop, the former director of regional film commission Herts Film Link. Using these methodologies, the article identifies Band of Brothers as the first significant US runaway television production in the UK, and uncovers how this HBO programme came to benefit from British film tax relief. Here, close attention is paid to dubious practices concerning tax policy and contractual agreements for actors, especially Damian Lewis's pay. The article demonstrates the impact Band of Brothers has had on television production in the UK in terms of providing Equity with a useful precedent when negotiating for subsequent international productions such as Game of Thrones (2011–19). Band of Brothers offers important and timely lessons to be learned, especially given the recent growth of US television runaway productions in the UK.

The collection of a toy: Production history and collection value of the Matchbox regarding the consumer behaviours

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Ceyda Özgen
Keyword(s):  
Rapid Development ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Casting Technique ◽  
Casting Technology ◽  
Production History ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Metal Castings ◽  
Second World

Metal casting technology reached at a very advanced point after the Second World War. When the war was over, many companies producing metal castings suffered a huge market loss and tried to create new markets and develop new products. Some companies, inspired by the rapid development of automobile production, started to produce toy model cars with the casting technique, which were generally made with sheet metal bending until then, using the moulding techniques they had advanced. In this study, the history of Lesney company, established after the Second World War, and the development of Matchbox’s product range will be discussed in the context of collecting and a collection object. Matchbox collections are the most common model car collections in the world. The status of the designed objects as collectible objects was investigated together with the history and development process of Matchbox cars production and collecting behaviour of consumer.

The Administration of War Production--History of the Second World War.

1957 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 145
Author(s):  
A. T. Wright ◽  
J. D. Scott ◽  
Richard Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Production ◽  
Second World

‘Assisted’ Migration and the Marshall Plan: the Italian Case

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-325
Author(s):  
Donatella Strangio
Keyword(s):  
Migration Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

Abstract Italy, as a country of arrival for many migrants from outside the European Union, is currently receiving much international media attention because of the ongoing so-called ‘migration crisis’. Historically, however, Italy has been a country of outward migration. This article analyses the history of Italian migration during the post-Second World War years. This crucial period in Italian history was characterised by economic reconstruction and recovery led by international institutions and the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan’s provisions on migration have received little scholarly attention, and this neglect is particularly pronounced in the case of Italy. This historical research draws mainly from documents retrieved from the Marshall Plan’s collections at the archives of the Bank of Italy, originally produced in the aftermath of the Second World War. The article is divided into four parts. The first section outlines the problem and embeds it within the existing literature on the history of migration policy in Italy. The second part examines the induced aid and migration policies of post-war Italy. The third part considers the architecture of the migration policy of that time, e.g. funding allocations and requests submitted to the United States for destination countries, such as Canada, or continents such as Latin America and Africa. Finally, the last section provides more in-depth analysis of the erp itself and its impact on Italian out-migration. The article concludes that cooperating and joint programming is a necessity for states in the management of migration.

Early Cinema in Scotland

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Audience

This collection of essays, drawn from a three-year AHRC research project, provides a detailed context for the history of early cinema in Scotland from its inception in 1896 till the arrival of sound in the early 1930s. It details the movement from travelling fairground shows to the establishment of permanent cinemas, and from variety and live entertainment to the dominance of the feature film. It addresses the promotion of cinema as a socially ‘useful’ entertainment, and, distinctively, it considers the early development of cinema in small towns as well as in larger cities. Using local newspapers and other archive sources, it details the evolution and the diversity of the social experience of cinema, both for picture goers and for cinema staff. In production, it examines the early attempts to establish a feature film production sector, with a detailed production history of Rob Roy (United Films, 1911), and it records the importance, both for exhibition and for social history, of ‘local topicals’. It considers the popularity of Scotland as an imaginary location for European and American films, drawing their popularity from the international audience for writers such as Walter Scott and J.M. Barrie and the ubiquity of Scottish popular song. The book concludes with a consideration of the arrival of sound in Scittish cinemas. As an afterpiece, it offers an annotated filmography of Scottish-themed feature films from 1896 to 1927, drawing evidence from synopses and reviews in contemporary trade journals.

Hard Objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517
Author(s):  
Ned Hercock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Discrete Series ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
The World ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of

This essay examines the objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series (1934). It considers their primary property to be their hardness – many of them have distinctively uniform and impenetrable surfaces. This hardness and uniformity is contrasted with 19th century organicism (Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Ruskin). Taking my cue from Kirsten Blythe Painter I show how in their work with hard objects these poems participate within a wider cultural and philosophical turn towards hardness in the early twentieth century (Marcel Duchamp, Adolf Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others). I describe the thinking these poems do with regard to industrialization and to human experience of a resolutely object world – I argue that the presentation of these objects bears witness to the production history of the type of objects which in this era are becoming preponderant in parts of the world. Finally, I suggest that the objects’ impenetrability offers a kind of anti-aesthetic relief: perception without conception. If ‘philosophy recognizes the Concept in everything’ it is still possible, these poems show, to experience resistance to this imperious process of conceptualization. Within thinking objects (poems) these are objects which do not think.

Messy, Energetic, Intense: A Roundtable Conversation among New York's Asian American Experimental Filmmakers of the Eighties with Roddy Bogawa, Daryl Chin, Shu Lea Cheang, and Rea Tajiri

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 66-78
Author(s):  
Vince Schleitwiler ◽  
Abby Sun ◽  
Rea Tajiri
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Asian American ◽  
York City ◽  
American Film ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
History Of

This roundtable grew out of conversations between filmmaker Rea Tajiri, programmer Abby Sun, and scholar Vince Schleitwiler about a misunderstood chapter in the history of Asian American film and media: New York City in the eighties, a vibrant capital of Asian American filmmaking with a distinctively experimental edge. To tell this story, Rea Tajiri contacted her artist contemporaries Shu Lea Cheang and Roddy Bogawa as well as writer and critic Daryl Chin. Daryl had been a fixture in New York City art circles since the sixties, his presence central to Asian American film from the beginning. The scope of this discussion extends loosely from the mid-seventies through the late nineties, with Tajiri, Abby Sun, and Vince Schleitwiler initiating topics, compiling responses, and finalizing its form as a collage-style conversation.

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

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