Film exhibition in Hyderabad in the 1930s

Author(s):  
C. Yamini Krishna
Keyword(s):  

Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex examines how the American military has used cinema and related visual, sonic, and mobile technologies to further its varied aims. The essays in this book address the way cinema was put to work for purposes of training, orientation, record keeping, internal and external communication, propaganda, research and development, tactical analysis, surveillance, physical and mental health, recreation, and morale. The contributors examine the technologies and types of films that were produced and used in collaboration among the military, film industry, and technology manufacturers. The essays also explore the goals of the American state, which deployed the military and its unique modes of filmmaking, film exhibition, and film viewing to various ends. Together, the essays reveal the military’s deep investment in cinema, which began around World War I, expanded during World War II, continued during the Cold War (including wars in Korea and Vietnam), and still continues in the ongoing War on Terror.


2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-295
Author(s):  
Timothy P. A. Cooper

AbstractFor many city dwellers in Pakistan the distant memory of outdoor cinemas in their ancestral villages rekindles the thrill of first contact with film exhibition. This paper considers attempts made in colonial British India and postcolonial Pakistan to understand, wield, and benefit from the staging of such memorable and affective filmic events. In its cultivation of “cinema-minded” subjects, the British Empire commissioned studies of audiences and their reactions to film exhibition in hopes of managing the unruly morality and materiality of the cinematic apparatus. After Partition and the creation of the Dominion of Pakistan, similar studies continued, evincing a residual strategy of elicited contact. The elicitation of film contact aimed at the exertion and commandment of the event of film exhibition for the purposes of knowing their constituent subjects at a moment of malleability. Yet the Empire's struggle with the perceived problems of “Muslim tastes” and audience members’ ambivalence over rural screenings in post-Partition Pakistan calls for a reconsideration of the efficacy of these tactics. I argue that what complicated these encounters are affective responses that questioned the address, permissibility, and efficacy of film exhibition. In these tactics of elucidation, disenchantment, and denial, ruptures are refused and the new is dismissed as inoperable, incompatible, or impermissible.


Author(s):  
Ross Melnick

This chapter, by Ross Melnick, examines the history of the Army Motion Picture Service (AMPS) and the intricate relationship between the U.S. Army and motion picture exhibition during both war and peacetime. Focusing on the industrial, logistical, and economic formation of AMPS, this chapter focuses on three key periods in the history of U.S. Army film exhibition. It argues that AMPS’s early status as independent of Army Morale, Welfare, and Recreation created unique challenges that hindered its early growth on U.S. Army bases and ultimately led to its withering amid the coming of digital projection and other contemporary challenges.


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