scholarly journals Contemporary Women Filmmakers in Myanmar: Reflections on a Visit in February 2019

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-91
Author(s):  
Valentina Vitali
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Short Films ◽  
Arts And Culture ◽  
National University ◽  
Women's Cinema ◽  
Development Department

Existing accounts of Myanmar’s film industry available to English speakers are more than twenty years out of date. Opening with a brief overview of cinema in Myanmar since 2000, this article is based on a recent visit to the Myanmar Motion Picture Development Department and the Yangon Film School, on conversations with staff, students and alumnae of these institutions and of the National University of Arts and Culture, and with local independent filmmakers. The purpose of my visit was to begin the groundwork needed to answer basic questions: Who are the women making films in Myanmar today? Where are they trained? What are the conditions in which they work? What kind of films they make? How do they fund production? How do their films circulate? And finally: Is there a women’s cinema in Myanmar? What follows thus outlines the context in which women in Myanmar make films today and introduces the work of a small number of them. I conclude with reflections on three short films: A Million Threads (2006, by Thu Thu Shein), Now I am 13 (2013, by Shin Daewe), and Seeds of Sadness (2018, by Thae Zar Chi Khaing), two of which can be found online (at http://yangonfilmschool.org/___-free-yfs-film / and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX0LUZQcMCQ ).

Blind Trust: Market Control, Legal Environments, and the Dynamics of Competitive Intensity in the Early American Film Industry, 1893–1920

2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Mezias ◽  
Elizabeth Boyle
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
American Film ◽  
Market Control ◽  
Early American ◽  
Short Films ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Trust Law ◽  
American Film Industry ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Mortality Analysis

This study of the emergence of the film industry in the U.S. between 1893 and 1920 contributes to the growing literature linking legal environments and population dynamics. This was an era characterized by a shift to active anti-trust policy, which manifested itself in legal action to disband a trust that had dominated the industry, the Motion Pictures Patents Corporation (MPPC). We use archival data to show that mortality was reduced by trust membership and increased with the market share of the trust members. The effects of litigation are varied, with litigation filed by trust members enhancing mortality and litigation filed against trust members decreasing mortality. Analysis of coded headlines from media reports on the emerging industry shows that a shift in the view of the trust in the normative environment toward a more negative view was also associated with decreased mortality. Results also show that learning and the compensatory fitness enjoyed before anti-trust law was enforced prevented the MPPC members from recognizing changes in the marketplace; as a result, they were less likely to move from making short films to making increasingly popular feature-length films.

The Congressional Battle over Motion Picture Distribution, 1936–40

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Jurca
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Federal Regulation ◽  
Justice Department ◽  
World War ◽  
Material Problem

Using largely un-researched congressional records, this chapter examines the four hearings held between 1936 and 1940 on trade practices in distribution, notably block-booking and blind selling, which underwrote an effective big-studio monopoly. It examines how the material problem of getting commercial entertainment from the scene of production to thousands of theatres nationwide impacted on the way various elements in the film industry, notably the big studios and independent exhibitors, represented its practices, as well as its products, both to Congress and to themselves. Although the studios were able to frustrate legislative efforts to challenge their interests, this only ensured that the Justice Department would seek legal redress through the courts. The coming of World War II briefly suspended New Deal efforts to strengthen federal regulation of the film business but the seeds were sewn by the end of the 1930s for the US v Paramount et al Supreme Court decision that did much to undermine studio power by requiring separation of the ownership of production and exhibition of films.

Porter, Edwin S. (1870–1941)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vito Adriaensens
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
American Film ◽  
Continuous Action ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Short Films ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Narrative Film

Edwin Stanton Porter was an American film exhibitor, producer, and director. He started his career in cinema in 1896 as a traveling exhibitor and moved on to become the motion picture operator of the New York Eden Musee wax museum. He also built motion picture machinery, which he continued doing until well after his retirement in 1925. As an operator and programmer, Porter edited short films into programs with narrative structures, effectively acting as producer and director. When the Edison Company was reorganized in 1900 he was hired to improve their cameras and projectors, but quickly became a cameraman, producer, and director. He produced over a hundred short films for Edison by collaborating with theater-trained directors, and became an important driving force behind the creation of modern, elaborate multishot films, the most famous of which is undoubtedly The Great Train Robbery (1903). Musser and Everson see Porter as a technician at heart—an editor who did not fully grasp the possibilities and principles of editing or acting, but who had an instinctive understanding of "continuity," or the safeguarding of smooth, continuous action through the combination of fragmented shots. Though Porter had been instrumental in lifting cinema out of what Tom Gunning has dubbed the "cinema of attractions" era, he arguably never realized his full potential as he was unwilling to invest himself in narrative film. When his methods had become antiquated in 1909, Edison fired him.

Hollywood Studios

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lev
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Gradual Change ◽  
American Film ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
American Film Industry

“Studio” and “Hollywood” are interestingly complex terms. “Studio” originally meant a room with abundant natural light. The first motion picture studios were large, glass-walled rooms designed for filming with natural light. The term “studio” expanded to refer to a motion picture production facility, and then it expanded again to mean a company that made motion pictures. By the late 1920s the best-known American studios were large, vertically integrated corporations that produced, distributed, and exhibited films: Paramount, MGM, Fox, Warner Bros., and RKO. Columbia, Universal, and United Artists were also considered major studios, though they owned few or no theaters, and there were smaller B-movie companies such as Monogram and Republic. “Hollywood” refers to a neighborhood north and west of downtown Los Angeles where a number of movie companies settled when they left the East Coast for California in the 1910s. This term has expanded in meaning as well; it now means all film production in the Los Angeles area, and even by synecdoche the entire American film industry. From about 1920 to 1950, film was the dominant entertainment industry in the United States, and the eight major studios firmly controlled this medium. The studios’ top executives, sometimes called “moguls” to emphasize their power, supervised thousands of employees and decided what films were made, how they were made, and how they were released. This is often called the “studio period,” or the “classic period,” or the “golden age of Hollywood.” After 1950 there was a gradual change to independent production as directors, producers, stars, and agents took over the creative aspects of filmmaking, with the studios mainly responsible for financing and distribution. Eventually, the Hollywood film studios expanded to other fields such as television, cable, music, home video, theme parks, and Internet, and they were bought or merged with larger corporations. The giant media conglomerates of the early 21st century (Disney, Time Warner, News Corp., Viacom, Comcast, and Sony) resemble the studios of old in their domination of the entertainment industry. This article will concentrate on the studio period, especially the economic and institutional histories of the eight major studios. However, since almost all of these companies still exist, and they are still called studios, some entries will discuss what happened to the American film industry and to the individual companies since the 1950s.

scholarly journals Karlovy Vary 98

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Holloway
Keyword(s):  
Full Moon ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Short Films ◽  
The Future ◽  
Russian Film

Moscow's loss was Karlovy Vary's gain. Why wasn't there a Moscow festival this year? Several reasons were given when the news broke at Cannes in May, none of them very promising for the future of the festival. Still, the Russian film industry is well on its way to recovery if the grabbag of features, documentaries, and short films programmed in different sections at the 33rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (3-11 July 1998) are to be taken at face value. For example, Karen Shakhnazarov's Full Moon probably would have opened the Moscow festival instead of premiering as the official Russian entry at Karlovy Vary. Produced by Mosfilm's managing director Vladimir Dostal, this rambling, intertwined, impressionistic tour of Moscow on a summer day from dawn to dusk is packed with a subtle run of sight and verbal gags. It opens with a scene shot on the very premises of the Mosfilm...

Feminism and Women’s Film History in 1980s Turkey

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eylem Atakav
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Film History ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Turkish Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women's Film ◽  
Film Texts ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the relationship between feminism and women's film history in the context of 1980s Turkey. In discussing women's film history, the chapter includes not only the history of women filmmakers and the films they have made but also the link between the history of Turkish film industry and feminism. It begins with a historical overview of the feminist movement in Turkey and then examines its visible traces in film texts produced during the 1980s in order to argue that those films can be most productively understood as explorations of gendered power relations. The chapter then considers how the enforced depoliticization introduced in Turkey after the 1980 coup opened up a space for feminist concerns to be expressed within commercial cinema. It also shows how this political context gave rise to the newly humanized, more independent heroine that characterized Turkish cinema during the period, but suggests that the films were nevertheless made largely within the structures of a patriarchal commercial cinema.

The FPA, US Propaganda, and Postwar Japanese Cinema

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-67
Author(s):  
Sangjoon Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Pacific Region ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
Japanese Film ◽  
The Us

This chapter recounts how Nagata Masaichi, president of Daiei Studio in Japan, pitched the idea of founding the Federation of Motion Picture Producers in Southeast Asia (FPA) and an annual Southeast Asian Film Festival. It discusses the consensus among American foreign officers stationed in Asia that communists had infiltrated the Japanese film industry since the end of the US occupation of Japan in April 1952. It also describes the activities of the “Reds” in the Japanese motion picture industry that is considered a threat to the United States' strategic Cold War interests in the Asia-Pacific region. The chapter cites Rashomon, which won the award for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars and elicited simultaneous respect and jealousy from other nations in the region. It elaborates how the unprecedented success of Rashomon rapidly established Nagata's presence in the Japanese film industry.

The Asia Foundation’s Motion Picture Project

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-46
Author(s):  
Sangjoon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Us Government ◽  
The 1950S

This chapter investigates how and to what extent the Asia Foundation (TAF) and its field agents covertly acted to construct an alliance of anticommunist motion picture producers in Asia. It explores how US government–led Cold War cultural policies influenced the Asian regional film industry in the 1950s. It also scrutinizes the ways TAF agents responded to the various needs of local film executives and negotiated with the constantly changing political, social, and cultural environments in the region during the project's early activities. The chapter reviews the origin of TAF, the Committee for a Free Asia (CFA), which is intended to advance US foreign policy interests in Asia. It discusses the CFA's core activities, which include the broadcasting of Radio Free Asia.

Patterns of Market Polarization and Market Matching in the Korean Film Industry

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sangyoub Park ◽  
Eui Hang Shin
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Motion Picture Industry ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Korean Film ◽  
Over Time

Despite its embedded ambiguity, conventional wisdom tends to prevail over time. This may be because old adages recurrently embrace some ingredients of truth. As James A. Mathisen highlights, conventional wisdom plays a significant role in constituting knowledge as a starting point. For many people, numerous adages (the rich get richer while the poor get poorer; birds of a feather flock together) are most commonly perceived as true. More interestingly, the accuracy of the two folk wisdoms appears to be more salient in culture-producing industries, including the motion picture industry. Concomitantly, the two adages have long been connected to diverse societal phenomena and sociological knowledge.

Close up: The female gaze and ethnic difference in two Vietnamese women's films

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lan Duong
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Ethnic Difference ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Vietnamese Women ◽  
Female Gaze ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Women's Films

This article looks at two contemporary films by Vietnamese women. In Việt Linh's Travelling Circus (1988) and Phạm Nhuệ Giang's The Deserted Valley (2002), a female gaze is sutured to that of an ethnic minority character's, a form of looking that stresses a shared oppression between women and the ethnic Other. While clearing a space for a desiring female gaze in Vietnamese film, they nonetheless extend an Orientalist view of racialised difference. A feminist film optic, one that does not consider industry history and constructions of race, fails to mark out the layered relations of looking underlying Vietnamese filmmaking. This study attends to the ways women filmmakers investigate gendered forms of looking, sexual desire and otherness within the constraints of a highly male-dominated film industry.

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