scholarly journals The emergence of Canadian Feature Film Policy

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Kern
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Home Market ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Box Office ◽  
American Films ◽  
Competitive Behaviour ◽  
Film Policy

DURING the 1920s and early 1930s American films regularly accounted for as much as eighty-five to ninety-five percent of the national Canadian box office. There were quite a few attempts, already in those early decades of cinema, to boost the fortune of the national film industry and to establish production companies and studios. These, however, with a few exceptions, did not last long enough to change the picture of the American-dominated Canadian film industry. Canadians tried to fight back and win the battle for their home market. However, their efforts were doomed. When an attempt was made to prosecute the local subsidiary of the American Adolph Zukor's Famous Players... the case was thrown out by the judge for "anti-competitive behaviour"! Many Canadian scholars tried to explain the mechanisms behind the repetitive failures of Canadian producers and filmmakers in their ongoing struggle to maintain their own film industry. They...

From Conan the Barbarian to Gunan il guerriero: Re-contextualizing spaghetti sword and sorcery

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfio Leotta
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Sword And Sorcery ◽  
Italian Film ◽  
The Aesthetic

The release of Conan the Barbarian (1982) played a crucial role in the emergence of the sword and sorcery film, a subgenre of fantasy cinema featuring muscular heroes in violent conflict with wizards and other supernatural creatures. Italian genre filmmakers attempted to capitalize on the international popularity of sword and sorcery by quickly producing a number of low-budget films, which emulated the stylistic and narrative features of Conan. Over a period of six years, between 1982 and 1987, the Italian film industry produced almost two dozen sword and sorcery films, which achieved mixed results at the box office. Although recently an increasing number of international film scholars have focused on the critical examination of Italian genre cinema, to date, little attention has been devoted to the study of Italian sword and sorcery. By examining the aesthetic features of four Italian sword and sorcery films (Gunan il guerriero [1982], Ator l’invincibile [1982], Hercules [1983] and The Barbarians [1987]), as well as their modes of production and distribution, this article proposes the first comprehensive critical examination of this filone.

Eleonora Duse: An Actress-Manager for the Italian Film Industry in the 1910s

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95
Author(s):  
Maria Pia Pagani
Keyword(s):  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
White Hair ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Original Case ◽  
Italian Film

From a historiographical point of view, the Italian diva Eleonora Duse (1858–1924) as an actress-manager offers an original case study in relation to her only film performance in Cenere ( Ashes, 1916). This is a film adapted from the eponymous novel by Grazia Deledda (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926). In the 1910s, when Duse decided to work in the Italian film industry, she was a celebrity and her name was a guarantee of success for the Ambrosio Company in Turin. The film producers wanted to use her celebrity in order to ensure success at the box office. As an actress-manager with a long and acclaimed international career in the theatre, Duse knew this mechanism very well, but her position was contrary to their expectations. In fact, she aimed to present herself as an anti-diva, with her wrinkle-furrowed face and white hair, proposing a fascinating artistic creation based on the ‘mother roles’ that she had created for the theatre. This paper explores new elements concerning the position of Duse as an actress-manager for the Italian film industry in the 1910s. It is focused on her strategy of reiterating her stage success in playing a mother. On film, she did not want to be an instrument used for commercial purposes, and she did not want to create a common popular diva film. With Cenere, Duse's capability as an actress-manager can be seen in her creation of this non-conventional, poetic role for the silent film industry in wartime Italy.

"TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE": POETRY OF FADING SOUND

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 100-107
Author(s):  
Yu. A. Finkelshtein ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Viola Da Gamba ◽  
Emotional Perception ◽  
Baroque Music ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
True Values

The object of the article is Alain Corneau's feature film "All the Mornings of the World" ("Tous les matins du monde", 1991). The movie is considered as a work of art with strong postmodern tendencies. The director uses music written in the XVIIth century to create an image of the era. The image of the gambist de Sainte-Colombe is formed on the basis of the aesthetic and emotional perception of his works by the creators of the movie. The timbre of viola da gamba, one of the key features of which is rapid fading, defines the main philosophical idea of the film. The "disadvantage" of the instrument, which contributed to its short life in art, is perceived by the filmmakers as its original value. The rapidly fading sound becomes a metaphorical symbol of dying and rebirth, death and immortality being one. In addition, Baroque music performs the function of temporary "immersion". Using the music of ancient styles, the film industry gains a foothold in true values and an element of authenticity. In turn, by participating in cinema, it appropriates the features of mass culture: lightness, illusiveness, and easy accessibility. Such ambivalence is also characteristic of the plot, in which events that evoke completely modern feelings take place against a historical background far removed from the present moment.

‘Images of Diversity’: Film Policy and the State Struggle for the Representation of Difference in French Cinema

Cinéma-monde ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Stewart
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Politics Of Representation ◽  
National Cinema ◽  
French Cinema ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Film Policy

This chapter considers the complexity of encouraging diversity through film policy through close analyses of the best-known films supported by the program, with particular attention to successful films by French Maghrebi and other minority directors. These films will be discussed in the fuller context of their box office success and critical reception, and minority filmmaking more generally. Finally, these films will be analysed within the range of works supported by the Images de la diversité fund to assess the extent to which national agencies can promote diversity through a multicultural politics of representation. In short, this chapter asks whether, in a country known for its national cinema, a carefully constructed film policy can intervene in an ongoing cultural debate about the changing character of the nation. By considering films that incorporate a cross-Mediterranean gaze, the chapter also considers how themes of migration and immigration are treated in France and in the Maghreb.

Argentine Cinema in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Rocha
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Domestic Market ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
American Films ◽  
State Directors ◽  
Studio System ◽  
Independent Filmmaking

Relying on Valentina Vitali and Paul Willemen’s statement that ‘both as an industry and a discursive practice, cinema is an adjunct of capitalism’ (2006, 7), I explain that to offset competition from American films, the Argentine state persistently sought to protect national film production through several laws, the most crucial of which was Law 62/57. Nevertheless, in the transition from the studio system to independent filmmaking, the Argentine film industry had an uneven success in its attempt to gain a considerable share of the domestic market. Through trial and error, the Argentine state, directors, and producers came up with different solutions to strengthen the production and circulation of national films, which in many cases were resisted by exhibitors and distributors.

Criminal Undertakings: Nicolas Winding Refn, European Film Aesthetics, and Hollywood Genre Cinema

2019 ◽  
pp. 370-377
Author(s):  
Björn Nordfjörd
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Crime Film ◽  
Box Office ◽  
American Films ◽  
The World ◽  
Gangster Film ◽  
Film Aesthetics

This chapter explores Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. Refn’s first feature Pusher (1996) was a local box-office success that helped usher in the era of the Nordic crime film, which includes his own follow-up Bleeders (1998) and two Pusher sequels (2004 and 2005). His American crime and gangster film, Drive (2011), is set in Los Angeles and is indebted to notable American classics of the genre. Reunited with Hollywood star Ryan Gosling, Refn continued to explore the international pedigree of the crime thriller in Only God Forgives (2013), where Gosling plays an American struggling to stay afloat in the Bangkok underworld. In Neon Demon (2016), Refn returns to Los Angeles, this time the world of fashion, where Hollywood gloss and European film aesthetics meet head-on. His three “American” films thus offer a striking blend of Hollywood genre and European art cinema traditions helping to explain their wildly mixed receptions.

Bava Goes Fashion

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-14
Author(s):  
Roberto Curti ◽  
Roberto Curti
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Foreign Markets ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
The World ◽  
Italian Film

This chapter recounts Mario Bava's seventh official solo feature film as a director, a present-day thriller set in the world of high fashion titled The Atelier of Death (L'atelier della morte). It also mentions Bava's two other Gothic horror movies released in Italy in the summer of 1963 that were destined primarily for foreign markets, especially in America. It discusses I tre volti della paura starring Boris Karloff and Mark Damon, and La frusta e il corpo with Christopher Lee and Daliah Lavi. The chapter describes Bava's debut film La maschera del demonio in 1960, which distributed overseas by American International Pictures under the title Black Sunday. It points out how the Italian film industry had increasingly been involved in bilateral and multinational co-productions since the first agreement signed with France in 1949.

Media Portrayals of the Woman Suffrage Movement

2021 ◽  
pp. 168-184
Author(s):  
Tina Olsin Lent
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Media Portrayals ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Elizabeth Cady Stanton ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Shifts ◽  
Woman Suffrage Movement

Contributor Tina Olsin Lent investigates representations of the women in four recent filmic representations of this movement: Ruth Pollak’s 1995 episode of PBS’s American Experience, One Woman, One Vote, Ken Burns’s 1999 documentary, Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Katja von Garnier’s 2004 HBO feature, Iron Jawed Angels, and Sarah Gavron’s 2015 feature film, Suffragette. Lent relates the new pattern of films to a number of cultural shifts that arise by the mid-1990s. Women assume more prominent positions within the film industry. Stories centered on women begin to find their way into films circulated in wide-release. Women also become more active in politics. And, notable anniversaries of various woman’s suffrage movements around the world begin to occur. Lent pays particular attention to the ways in which the histories found in the above four films bend to fit the narrative and political priorities surrounding each production.

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