Spatial effects Sites of exhibition: Multiplex cinema Independent art house cinema Art gallery Festivals & special events Domestic setting
Oppositions Debate high vs. mass culture High art vs. kitsch (simulacra of the real) Political avant-garde practice vs. fetishized commodity
Art gallery & Art house cinema Art gallery formalist aesthetic tradition bourgeois avant-garde (depends on bourgeois patronage) Film acquires status of collectible, limited in transmission Art house cinema political tradition Independence from mass cultural dissemination (anti capitalist affinities) Independent aesthetics (formally innovative films, social realist texts, foreign films)
The multiplex Invented to reinvigorate cinema-going by maximising corporal, sensory affect technological investments in surround-sound & widescreen Multiplicity of choices 8-10 films running simultaneously Activity of cinema-going takes priority over film viewed (films not selected in advance)
Commodity culture Multiplex situate film as commodity among others within shopping mall Modernism confluence between act of looking at both shop displays and cinematic images Late 19 th century encounters with otherness Tourism = interest in other places (colonial infrastructure underpinning) Consumer culture brings goods from elsewhere into proximity Friedberg (1993) cinema = virtual gaze of postmodernism - mobility of time & space
Leisure Multiplex as leisure reconfiguration of cinema from cultural practice to more general & hybrid activity Leisure, entertainment & cultural practice dissolution & convergence pushed forward Film = one component within an associated chain (film as advertisement for ancillary products: soundtrack, DVD, computer game)
The multiplex and the city Coincident emergence of cinema & modernist city City = society of spectacle (Guy Debord) Today multiplexes built as out-of-town devts, satellite spaces periphery Distance from historical centre connection betw the individual and the global, bypassing local & national particularity Art house & gallery embedded in city centre local historical markers become emblems of particularity
Film festivals Approx a 1,000 festivals worldwide Emergence in Europe in aftermath of 2 nd WW (Cannes 1946, Berlin 1951) rebuild Europe & consolidate it as global player national cultures & aesthetic practices vs. mainstream American film product
Polarities & hybridities Opposition art vs. commerce European film vs. American dominance Serious film festivals vs. cosmeticised industries of tourism & service economy Yet: Threat of mass spectacle & leisure Restriction art vs. commerce becomes unviable
Mixed spaces Commercial interest Promotion of filmic texts for later distribution New/additional/alternative distribution network Specialised film knowledge Critics & reviewers Tourist trajectories Regional/national territory promotion
Exclusive nature Festivals mediated thru journalism (few are televised) Accounts of first-hand experience Narrative of prize-winning Site of specialised knowledge Berlin, Cannes, Venice : practice of premières & exclusive selections secure value of text ( luxury goods )
Luxury goods Appadurai (1986): principal use of luxury goods is social & rhetorical 5 signs of symbolic value Acquisition of prizes Complexity of acquisition thru managed scarcity Semiotic virtuosity signals complex social messages Specialised knowledge as prerequisite for appropriate consumption High degree of linkage in consuming the goods to the body or the personality
Accounts of film festivals Focus on personal festival experience & intensity of festival moment Reviews Personal encounters with film makers & stars Rumours of production controversies Less attention to marketing dimension & sale of distribution rights disavowal of afterlife of film Yet, star phenomenon (enhancing of glamour by attendance of stars) & presence of majors Hybridity
Perception that major festivals have become commercial markets Parallel forums (Cannes: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Berlin: International Forum of Young Cinema)
Sundance to Sarajevo Festivals with business agenda: Cannes Sundance ShoWest Festivals with geopolitical agenda: FESPACO Havana Sarajevo Midnight Sun Festivals with aesthetic agenda: Pordenone Lone Pine Telluride
References Film Cultures, Janet Harbord Sundance to Sarajevo, Kenneth Turan