scholarly journals Filmowa franczyza. Od tematu do widowiska telewizyjnego (na podstawie cyklu „Prawdziwe Historie”)

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (35) ◽  
pp. 159-170
Author(s):  
Wojciech Otto
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Commercial Product ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Financial Success ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Know How ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Film Style

The TV series True Stories (Prawdziwe Historie) is an example of contemporary commercial cinema. It is located on the border of documentary film and an attractive version of fictional cinema. In specific circumstances, it can be treated as a commercial product, but not only in the sense of film production and distribution, but more broadly, as a recognisable brand on the domestic cinema market, containing all the elements of industry know-how, as well as significant and commonly seen features of a film style that guarantees both turnout and financial success. In a sense, therefore, this phenomenon can be considered in terms of a film franchise which offers creators, most often beginners, a proven business patent in the form of a coherent television series, but also giving the possibility of a safe feature debut and the space for creative exploration.

Before Six Years After. Notes on the re-emergence of a film archive in Guinea-Bissau

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Hering
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Guinea Bissau ◽  
Ongoing Project

In 2011, the artist Filipa César was given access to the archive of the Instituto Nacional de Cinema e Audiovisual (INCA) in Bissau, which holds the remains of a precarious but dedicated documentary film production during the final phase of the liberation war and the first years of independence in Guinea-Bissau (roughly from 1972 to 1980). Together with two of the film-makers involved, Flora Gomes and Sana na N'Hada, and a group of researchers and film-makers from Bissau, Filipa César is since then engaged in an ongoing project experimenting with various forms of re-visualization and re-evaluation of this archive. Tobias Hering has participated in this process on several occasions and wrote about it in the essay "Before six years after," published for Filipa César's exhibition at Jeu de Paume (Paris) in October 2012. The text published here is a critically revised and annotated version of this earlier essay.

Global and local rhetorics at a public-facing private company: Studiocanal and French cinema

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-327
Author(s):  
Christopher Meir
Keyword(s):  
International Market ◽  
International Markets ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Home Market ◽  
French Cinema ◽  
Private Company ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
Made In

This article utilizes Canal+’s film production and distribution subsidiary Studiocanal as a way to understand both companies’ impacts on French cinema since the formation of the subsidiary in the early 1990s. As such, the article is structured as a chronology and an analysis of the major films made in French and financed by Studiocanal in terms of their critical and popular reception. The article also examines the talent relationships underpinning this production and the trajectories of the various stars, writers, directors, and producers who worked on the films as well as the executives who oversaw them. Finally, the article analyzes the corporate rhetoric that was advanced by both Studiocanal and Canal+ over the years to position itself in the French and international markets. Synthesizing these branches of the analysis and noting certain cyclical patterns, the article argues that Studiocanal’s relationship to French cinema has been complex and changeable, at times limited in favor of pursuing the international market, at times devoting ample amounts of rhetoric and resources to pursuing success in its home market. Moreover, the article demonstrates that the company’s production activities have helped to mold a generation of French filmmakers and industry executives who have in turn gone on to influential careers. Looking forward, the article concludes by arguing that by virtue of its size and scale as a producer and distributor, Studiocanal will always be a significant player in French cinema.

Cottonopolis: Experimenting With the Cinematographic, The Ethnographic and the Essayistic

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Greenhalgh
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Film Production ◽  
World Cinema

Cathy Greenhalgh considers the making of her essay film Cottonopolis(90’, 2020). The film combines memories of three different yet interconnected ‘Manchesters’, that is historical mega-textile cities Manchester (England), Ahmedabad (Gujarat, India) and Łódź (Poland), with observations of contemporary handloom and power loom cotton manufacture. In her anticipated film Greenhalgh employs documentary techniques, reflexive essay and meditation, sensory and material culture ethnography, as well as oral historiography and experimental visual immersion. She sets out to discuss film production concerns related to questions of the cinematographic, ethnographic and essayistic. Her analysis is underpinned by a practice point-of-view, conversations with Indian film colleagues and various theories of essay, ethnographic and documentary film practice, eco-criticism, world cinema and diaspora aesthetics.

The Grierson Testament, 1969–71

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Evans
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Developing World ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Mcgill University ◽  
Television Film ◽  
The Subject

From 1969 to 1971, documentary film movement pioneer and founder John Grierson spent his sunset years at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. During that time, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission invited him to Ottawa to advise on the state of television policy and Canadian communications in general. Typically, Grierson cut a wide swathe through the subject, and provided a stimulating analysis of the state of Canada’s public institutions of television, film production, and realist filmmaking. Three volumes of transcripts of his audiotaped sessions stand as his final testament. Using this source, this chapter develops an overview of his position on the industry, on government-sponsored film, and on prospects for expanding realist images in what he acerbically called a developing world of consumerism and inane television. Typically, Grierson’s comments were filled with intelligence, experience, and acumen, while he also seemed to be wrestling with various contradictions and ideas derived from 19th century idealist philosophy. Perhaps Grierson was, as some have said, a curious combination of irreconcilable opposites. These transcripts reveal a visionary who had made things happen, whether as a bull in a china shop or as a fencer whose rapier intelligence demolished or convinced those with whom he engaged. With his death in 1972, this material stands as his last testament.

An Attempt of the Commercial Film Production Support System Based on the Image Rhetoric of Commercial Film

2016 ◽  
pp. 118-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoji Kawamura
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Provider Type ◽  
Product Function ◽  
Willingness To Buy ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Information Engineering ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Basic Image

This chapter describes the concepts behind a Commercial Film Production Support System (CFPSS) in terms of related studies in the areas of advertising, image techniques and rhetoric, cognitive science, and information engineering. The chapter then analyzes the structure of commercial films to establish and describe an information system that is tested with a viewing experiment. The proposed system reflects the environment by implementing basic image techniques to create commercial films through an interaction between the users and the system. The experiment uses commercial films for beer with 55 participants. The results show that evaluations for image types related to the advertising story generate the most interest and high evaluations for the provider type of rhetoric stimulates willingness to buy. In terms of technique, mise-en-scène and editing attracts interest, and the advertising story associated with the product function and the supporting production and distribution stimulates willingness to buy.

Contemporary Brazilian Cinema

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfredo Luiz Suppia
Keyword(s):  
State Funding ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Private Initiative ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Ticket Sales ◽  
Complete Eradication ◽  
Brazilian Cinema ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Distribution Company ◽  
Brazilian Film

At first glance, contemporary Brazilian cinema seems to be the byproduct of a mid-1990s renaissance in national film production. Accordingly, to better understand contemporary Brazilian cinema, it is advisable to recall the Brazilian film industry’s situation in the 1980s. An unsteady period followed by a major decline in national film production in the late-1980s and early-1990s, these were years illustrated by the dismantling of Embrafilme (Empresa Brasileira de Filmes), culminating in the complete eradication of the state-run film production and distribution company in March 1990. Around 1993–1994, however, a renaissance of Brazilian cinema occurred, in terms of film production and ticket sales, which has been called “Cinema da Retomada.” A cinematic phenomenon, fundamentally fueled by the industry’s access to new sources of state funding, the Retomada was predominately brought about by fiscal exemptions allowed by the Audiovisual Law (Lei do Audiovisual), as well as by grants such as the “Prêmio Resgate do Cinema Brasileiro,” coming from the Ministry of Culture. Later, the Rouanet Law (Lei Rouanet) strengthened the funding not only for film, but for cultural projects and events as a whole. Likewise, municipal and state laws promoting fiscal exemptions also had a fundamental role in the recovery of film production in the country. All these laws allowed the private initiative to redirect funds from taxes to film production. This article will provide a basic bibliography of the aforementioned topics, addressing the economic, sociological, and aesthetic issues related to contemporary Brazilian cinema.

scholarly journals ‘To Be a Woman’: Female Labour and Memory in Documentary Film Production, 1929–50

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 584-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Fox
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Film Production ◽  
World War ◽  
Female Labour ◽  
Professional Recognition ◽  
A Site ◽  
Second World

Despite extensive scholarship on British documentary in the period from 1929 to 1950, the role of female documentary film-makers has received relatively little attention, partly due to their fragmented and partial ‘archival trace’. Combining neglected materials in the BECTU oral history project, the personnel records of the GPO Film Unit, and the personal papers of leading female documentarists, this article challenges the standard narrative of wartime opportunity and postwar decline that tends to characterise the examination of women's employment more broadly in this period. It uses women's experience in documentary film production to offer a more complex explanation of the effect of war within a wider chronological framework and within the context of workflow, labour patterns, training and networks within the industry itself. It examines female documentarists’ own accounts, through oral histories, to suggest that such sources should be ‘read against the light’ to offer insights into the memory of the Second World War, contending that the place of gender in defining individual careers both during and after the conflict remains contested, a site of the continued struggle for professional recognition, achievement and identity.

Emotions, Activism and Documentary Storytelling: A Biographical Production-Based Case Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-123
Author(s):  
Tom Murray
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Narrative Structures

Abstract The biography of Douglas Grant (c.1885–1951) has been publicly and popularly told in media since 1916. Interestingly, Grant’s unusual life-story has consistently been deployed to serve various political agendas. This essay examines the role of popular-media biographies of Douglas Grant and the emotions embedded in them, and utilises a documentary-film production as a case study to examine relations between these emotions, activist agendas and documentary-film storytelling. Additionally, given the consistent use of tragedy as a formal narrative structure employed in tellings of Douglas Grant’s story, this essay also describes how narrative structures are not culturally neutral, but are themselves emotionally suggestive cultural productions. Analysing a century of tellings of the Douglas Grant biography, this essay also offers insights into how conquest-colonial ideology is manifest in these often ‘tragic’ tales. As an attempt at decolonising scholarship, this essay also responds to insights by Indigenous commentators within the case-study text to reflect on Indigenous ontologies and the role of Country and Indigenous futurism as places/sites/histories of hope.

Merdeka!: Merger, Separation and a Transnational Golden Age

2018 ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Edna Lim
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Transnational Cinema ◽  
National Cinema ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Transnational Space

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.

From Contextualisation to Categorisation of Animated Documentaries

2018 ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Pascal Lefèvre
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Production ◽  
New Journalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Documentary Filmmaking ◽  
Artificial Nature ◽  
Live Action

This chapter provides a wide-ranging account of animated documentary cinema’s evolution, one which relates that ongoing history to analogous developments in related fields including live-action documentary, painting, photography and New Journalism. By their overt artificial nature animated documentaries seem to challenge the traditional documentary epistemology. Lefèvre considers the extent to which established Film Studies conceptual and analytical paradigms offer pre-existing tools that contemporary scholars can readily transpose to the study of animated documentary. This essay questions if the animated documentaries still fit in the six categories or modes of documentary film production that Bill Nichols defined: the poetic, the expository, the observational, the participatory, the reflexive, and the performative mode. This chapter highlights many of the critical and conceptual questions which that partially obscured history raises, laying out ten distinct sets of logistical, aesthetic and ideological issues that repeatedly manifest themselves across the history of animated documentary filmmaking.

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