Cinema, Audiences and Modernity

Transcription

1 Cinema, Audiences and Modernity The purpose of this book is to shed new light on the cinema and modernity debate by confronting established theories on the role of the modern cinematic experience with new empirical work on the history of the social experience of cinema-going, film audiences and film exhibition in Europe. The book provides a wide range of research methodologies and perspectives on these matters, including: the use of oral history methods questionnaires diaries audience letters industrial, sociological and other accounts on historical film audiences. The collection s case studies thus provide a how to compendium of current methodologies for researchers and students working on film and media audiences, film and media experiences, and historical reception. The volume is part of a new cinema history movement within film and screen studies to look at cinema history not only as a history of production, textual relations or movies-as-artefacts, but rather to concentrate on the reception and social experience of cinema, and the engagement of film/cinema (history) from below. The contributions to the volume reflect on the very different ways in which cinema has been accepted, rejected or disciplined as an agent of modernity in neighbouring parts of Europe, and on how cinema-going has been promoted and regulated as a popular social practice at different times in twentieth-century European history. Daniel Biltereyst is Professor in Film and Media Studies at the Department of Communication Studies, Ghent University, Belgium, where he leads the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS). His research on film and screen culture as sites of controversy and censorship has been published in Cultural Policy, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Media, Culture & Society, Screen Studies in French Cinema, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema. Richard Maltby is Professor of Screen Studies and Deputy Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education, Humanities, Law and Theology at Flinders University, South Australia. He is Series Editor of Exeter Studies in Film History, the author of over 50 articles and essays, and the lead investigator on two Australian Research Council Discovery projects examining the structure of the distribution and exhibition industry and the history of cinema audiences in Australia. Philippe Meers is Professor in Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His publications on popular media culture and film audiences have appeared in Screen Media, Culture & Society, The Journal of Popular Film and Television, Iluminace and other journals. He was the lead investigator on The Enlightened City-project on the history of film exhibition and film culture in Flanders and Brussels (2005 8, with Daniel Biltereyst and Marnix Beyen).

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3 Cinema, Audiences and Modernity New Perspectives on European Cinema History Edited by Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers

4 First published 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2012 Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers, editorial and selection matter; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Cinema audiences and modernity: an introduction / Daniel Biltereyst [editor]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Motion picture audiences: Europe: History: 20th century. 2. Motion picture industry: Europe: History: 20th century. I. Biltereyst, Daniël, PN A8C : dc ISBN: (hbk) ISBN: (pbk) ISBN: (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

5 Contents List of figures and tables Contributors Acknowledgements vii ix xiii 1. Cinema, audiences and modernity: an introduction 1 Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers PART I Cinema, Tradition and Community Spaces of early film exhibition in Sweden: Åsa Jernudd 3. Moviegoing under military occupation: Düsseldorf, Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk 4. Christ is coming to the Elite Cinema : film exhibition in the Catholic South of the Netherlands, 1910s and 1920s 50 Thunnis Van Oort 5. Imagining modern Hungary through film: debates on national identity, modernity and cinema in early twentieth-century Hungary 64 Anna Manchin

6 vi Contents 6. The cinematic shapes of the socialist modernity programme: ideological and economic parameters of cinema distribution in the Czech Lands, Pavel Skopal 7. The management committee intend to act as ushers : cinema operation and the South Wales Miners Institutes in the 1950s and 1960s 99 Stefan Moitra PART II Audiences, Modernity and Cultural Exchange Urban legend: early cinema, modernization and urbanization in Germany, Annemone Ligensa 9. Diagnosis: Flimmeritis : female cinemagoing in Imperial Germany, Andrea Haller 10. Afgrunden in Germany: monopolfilm, cinemagoing and the emergence of the film star Asta Nielsen, Martin Loiperdinger 11. Little Italy on the brink : the Italian diaspora and the distribution of war films in London, Pierluigi Ercole 12. Hollywood in disguise: practices of exhibition and reception of foreign films in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s 166 Petr Szczepanik 13. Negotiating cinema s modernity: strategies of control and audience experiences of cinema in Belgium, 1930s 1960s 186 Daniel Biltereyst, Philippe Meers, Kathleen Lotze and Lies Van de Vijver Index 202