Anthropology, Film Industries, Modularity

2021 ◽  

From Bangladesh and Hong Kong to Iran and South Africa, film industries around the world are rapidly growing at a time when new digital technologies are fundamentally changing how films are made and viewed. Larger film industries like Bollywood and Nollywood aim to attain Hollywood's audience and profitability, while smaller, less commercial, and often state-funded enterprises support various cultural and political projects. The contributors to Anthropology, Film Industries, Modularity take an ethnographic and comparative approach to capturing the diversity and growth of global film industries. They outline how modularity—the specialized filmmaking tasks that collectively produce a film—operates as a key feature in every film industry, independent of local context. Whether they are examining the process of dubbing Hollywood films into Hindi, virtual reality filmmaking in South Africa, or on-location shooting in Yemen, the contributors' anthropological methodology brings into relief the universal practices and the local contingencies and deeper cultural realities of film production. Contributors. Steven C. Caton, Jessica Dickson, Kevin Dwyer, Tejaswini Ganti, Lotte Hoek, Amrita Ibrahim, Sylvia J. Martin, Ramyar D. Rossoukh

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Nethercot

For more than 35 years the author has been directly involved with the preparation of Structural Steel Design Codes – both in the UK and, more widely, in the EU. This activity has also extended to include direct association with Code developments in several other countries around the world e.g. South Africa, Hong Kong etc. plus observation of the process in many places. Utilising the UK position as the timeline, this paper presents a largely personal view of developments over the past 100 years, beginning in the pre-code era and culminating in today's age of international cooperation.


Author(s):  
Edna Lim

This chapter begins the book’s study of the golden age as a pre- national cinema, and examines the period as a transnational cinema that mimics Singapore’s positioning as a transnational space. Borrowing Sheldon Lu’s argument on Chinese cinema, it shows that film production in Singapore arose as ‘an event of transnational capital from its beginning’. To that end, the chapter considers the development, practices and migrant constitution of the film industry vis-à-vis the socio-political circumstances of this burgeoning nation, including Singapore’s complex relationship with Malaysia, and places Singapore cinema within the larger transnational network of film production and distribution in the region, Hong Kong and China.


Autism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136236132110225
Author(s):  
Lauren Franz ◽  
Jill Howard ◽  
Marisa Viljoen ◽  
Linmarie Sikich ◽  
Tara Chandrasekhar ◽  
...  

When COVID-19 disrupted autism spectrum disorder research globally, many clinical trials of behavioral interventions pivoted to telehealth. Telehealth has the potential to increase geographic reach and improve racial/ethnic diversity in research. This matters because most autism spectrum disorder intervention studies have primarily included White, upper-middle-income families from North America and Europe. Participant homogeneity limits our ability to identify what types of intervention works in which context for which populations. Importantly, telehealth needs to “fit” the local context, and in particular, include strategies that factor in the “digital divide.” This short report details contextual considerations and pre-implementation pragmatic adaptations in two autism spectrum disorder clinical trials that include Early Start Denver Model–informed caregiver coaching in the United States and South Africa. By comparing and contrasting how implementation context informed the telehealth pivot in these two clinical trials in different hemispheres, we highlight equity considerations for adaption. The pandemic is an opportunity to understand how remote intervention can “fit” diverse contexts, while providing valid scientific results. It is however important that adaptations be documented and feasibility of the adapted approach be tracked. COVID-19-related telehealth adaptations of behavioral interventions could facilitate the development of new strategies with wider global impact. Lay abstract COVID-19 caused many autism spectrum disorder caregiver-coaching studies to move to telehealth. Telehealth can increase the diversity of people who take part in research. This matters because most autism spectrum disorder studies have included people who have resources, are White, and live in North America and Europe. When study participants are similar, it is hard to understand which interventions can help different types of people who live in different parts of the world. While telehealth may allow more people to take part in research, it needs to “fit” the local context and consider the “digital divide” because many people around the world have no access to computers and the Internet. This short report describes changes to two research studies that include caregiver coaching based on the Early Start Denver Model in the United States and South Africa. We describe how the local context, including technology and Internet access, guided the telehealth approach. By doing so, we highlight ways to make telehealth available to more people around the world. The pandemic can help us understand how telehealth can “fit” diverse places and support high-quality research. It is important that study changes are tracked and we assess how well the changes work. COVID-19 telehealth changes to caregiver coaching can result in new ways to reach more people around the world.


Author(s):  
Jan Uhde

PENANG'S 1st EAST ASIA FILM AND TELEVISION FESTIVAL LIKE the Hong Kong film industry, Iran has already had fifty years of filmmaking, amounting to the production of 1,200 films in that time. Few national cinemas have had to go through the changes and pressures that Iranian filmmaking has been subjected to from the Shah era of the 1970s to the tumultuous revolutionary days of the Ayatollah Khomeini to the recent creative years. In fact as early as 1989, the Hong Kong International Film Festival was showing Iranian features like Mohsen Makhmalbaf's The Peddlar and Dariush Farhang's The Spell. Despite their difficulties, Iranian filmmakers have tenaciously held on to their art. This year, with much persistence, they have shown to the world that their cinema is more than children's films or propaganda. Even before Abbas Kiarostami's The Taste of Cherry (Ta'm-e Gilass) shared this May's Cannes Palme d'Or with The...


Author(s):  
Bryan Turnock

This chapter evaluates the British horror film industry. Given the country's input in the success of the Hollywood horror films of the 1930s, in terms of source material as well as technicians and actors, horror film production in Britain was remarkably slow to emerge. This was due in no small part to the stringent censorship rules of the British Board of Film Censorship/Classification (BBFC), who did their best to dissuade British studios from making such films. The chapter investigates how one studio took up the reins of the genre and went on to dominate it for almost two decades. Matched only by the golden age of Universal in the 1930s and 1940s, Hammer Films produced some of the genre's most iconic images and characters through dozens of productions, while breaking box-office records around the world. The chapter looks at Terence Fisher's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), the company's first foray into the genre, one which would lay the foundations for their success and set the template for the English Gothic horror film as it flourished into the 1960s and 1970s.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Adam Mclennan

<p>This research analyses the forces that have led to the design of contemporary offices, examining how these forces are likely to change; with the goal of exploring what the future of workspaces might be. Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence are changing the world of work at a rapid rate, threatening to greatly increase effects of automation. Social changes in the way people work are also taking place, seen in the recent explosion in coworking. This gives rise to the question of what the implications of this are on the design of workspaces. This research uses the local context of Wellington as a vehicle to explore what the future of workspaces could be for the city, as well as wider New Zealand. A process of design led research is utilised, as the topic of work in general is vast, encompassing many different areas. This research also reviews how other designers and architects are responding to current workplace design issues, utilising these different approaches in the iterative design phase. The implications of this research relate directly to the city of Wellington, giving an idea of what the future of the office could be. The broad nature of the initial investigation also allows some conclusions to be applied internationally, as work in general is greatly examined.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Adam Mclennan

<p>This research analyses the forces that have led to the design of contemporary offices, examining how these forces are likely to change; with the goal of exploring what the future of workspaces might be. Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence are changing the world of work at a rapid rate, threatening to greatly increase effects of automation. Social changes in the way people work are also taking place, seen in the recent explosion in coworking. This gives rise to the question of what the implications of this are on the design of workspaces. This research uses the local context of Wellington as a vehicle to explore what the future of workspaces could be for the city, as well as wider New Zealand. A process of design led research is utilised, as the topic of work in general is vast, encompassing many different areas. This research also reviews how other designers and architects are responding to current workplace design issues, utilising these different approaches in the iterative design phase. The implications of this research relate directly to the city of Wellington, giving an idea of what the future of the office could be. The broad nature of the initial investigation also allows some conclusions to be applied internationally, as work in general is greatly examined.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-33
Author(s):  
Andrew Spicer

The article argues that Bernard Delfont played a significant role in the development of the British film industry in the 1970s as head of EMI's entertainment division that included film. In contradistinction to existing accounts, it is contended that Delfont provided dynamic leadership to the corporation's policies through the skills and knowledge he had developed as a highly successful theatrical impresario, even if he lacked a detailed understanding of the film industry. Delfont made a series of bold choices. The first was to appoint Bryan Forbes as Head of Film Production in an imaginative attempt to revitalise the British film industry using indigenous resources and talent. The commercial failure of this initiative occasioned Forbes's departure and a more cautious regime under the direction of Nat Cohen. Faced with a rapidly shrinking domestic market, Delfont decided that a thoroughgoing internationalism was the only way to sustain EMI's film business. He sidelined Cohen by appointing two young ‘buccaneers’, Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings in May 1976 to pursue a policy of investing in Hollywood films and producing ‘American’ films financed by British money. This radical strategy was controversial and reconfigured EMI as a ‘supranational’ rather than national film producer. This was intensified by Delfont's boldest move: establishing Associated Film Distributors (AFD) in July 1979, in partnership with his brother Lew Grade's Associated Communication Company, to distribute their companies' films and become a major Hollywood player. Its failure, after only 20 months, coupled with spectacular production losses effectively ended both companies as important film production units. Delfont's career demonstrates the wider significance of the risk-taking impresario in understanding British film as a business enterprise, the importance of the policies and tastes of studio heads and the need to reposition the film industry as part of wider entertainment and leisure provision.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-330
Author(s):  
Tara Coleman

Abstract Grounded in the heterogenous linguistic and cultural landscape of Hong Kong, this article proposes a translational approach to the practice of world cinema, focusing on director Wong Kar-wai, via World Literature and the poetry of Leung Ping-kwan. Wong is a lyrical cinematic stylist, while Leung had a strong scholarly interest in cinema and produced many collaborations with visual artists. Both are highly attuned to the distinctiveness of daily life in Hong Kong despite its infusion of international influences. Moving beyond a model which sees translation as a secondary process carrying a work beyond its local context, I use Sakai Naoki’s concept of the “heterolingual address” to trace how translation becomes foundational to these artists’ engagement with the multilayered space and uneven temporality of Hong Kong.


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