The American Film Industry

Upon its original publication in 1976, The American Film Industry was welcomed by film students, scholars, and fans as the first systematic and unified history of the American movie industry. Now this indispensible anthology has been expanded and revised to include a fresh introductory overview by editor Tino Balio and ten new chapters that explore such topics as the growth of exhibition as big business, the mode of production for feature films, the star as market strategy, and the changing economics and structure of contemporary entertainment companies. The result is a unique collection of essays, more comprehensive and current than ever, that reveals how the American movie industry really worked in a century of constant change-from kinetoscopes and the coming of sound to the star system, 1950s blacklisting, and today's corporate empires.

The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry is a completely revised and updated edition of Anthony Slide's The American Film Industry, originally published in 1986 and recipient of the American Library Association's Outstanding Reference Book award for that year. More than 200 new entries have been added, and all original entries have been updated; each entry is followed by a short bibliography. As its predecessor, the new dictionary is unique in that it is not a who's who of the industry, but rather a what's what: a dictionary of producing and releasing companies, technical innovations, industry terms, studios, genres, color systems, institutions and organizations, etc. More than 800 entries include everything from "Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences" to "Zoom Lens", from "Astoria Studios" to "Zoetrope". Outstanding Reference Source - American Library Association

This book makes the case for unproduction studies, the study of films left unmade, unseen, or unreleased, as a radical discipline with the potential to uncover a shadow history of the American film industry. Exploring the archival methods that can be utilised in this endeavour, James Fenwick argues that a revisionist history is needed to understand the logic of the film industry, finding that it has long-been predicated on a system of unmade creativity in which finances, resources, and labour is invested into projects that production companies know will never be produced or have no intention of ever producing. Using the Production Code Administration (PCA) records, housed at the Margaret Herrick Library, as a case study, the book explores the material existence of the unmade and considers how archives and archival methods can be used to construct a shadow history that recovers the forgotten, marginalised, and overlooked figures in film history, providing explanations for structural forces that contributed to the unmade. Given its unique use of the unmade as an analytic for film history, this book will be an essential read for scholars interested in film and media history, performance studies, film production, and creative practice, as well as to archivists and archival researchers.

Presiding over the "golden era" of the British Film Industry from the mid to late 1940s, J. Arthur Rank financed movies such as Oliver Twist, The Red Shoes, Brief Encounter, Caesar and Cleopatra and Black Narcissus. Never before, and never since, has the industry risen to such heights. J. Arthur Rank charts every aspect of the robust film culture that Rank helped to create. Having started out with relatively little knowledge of the cinema, Rank's sponsorship was to bring about astounding progress within the industry, and by establishing an organization comparable in size to any of the major Hollywood studios, Rank briefly managed to reconcile and consolidate the competing demands of "art" and "business" - an achievement very much absent from today's diminished and fragmented film industry. Macnab goes on to explain the eventual collapse of the Rank experiment amidst the economic and political maelstrom of post-war Britain, highlighting the problems still facing the industry today. By meshing archival research with interviews with Rank's contemporaries and members of his family, this definitive study firmly restores Rank to his rightful place at the hub of British film history.

Film production in Latin America is as old as cinema itself, but local film industries have always been in a triangulated relationship with Hollywood and European cinema. This book situates Latin American film industries within the global circulation of film production, exhibition and distribution, charting the changes that the industries have undergone from the sound era to the present day. Focusing in particular on Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, Tamara Falicov examines commonalities among Latin American film industries, such as the challenges of procuring funding, competition from Hollywood, state funding battles, and the fickle nature of audiences, as well as censorship issues, competition from television, and the transnational nature of Latin American film. She addresses production, exhibition, and distribution contexts and financing and co-production with Europe and the United States, as well as the role of film festivals in funding and circulating films both within and outside of Latin America. Newer trends such as the revival of protectionist measures like the screen quota are framed in contrast to the U.S.'s push for trade policy liberalization and issues of universal concern such as film piracy, and new technologies and the role of television in helping and hindering Latin American cinema.

Is there more to 1970s British cinema than sex, horror and James Bond? This lively account argues that this is definitely the case and explores the cultural landscape of this much maligned decade to uncover hidden gems and to explode many of the well-established myths about 1970s British film and cinema.

The global film industry has witnessed significant transformations in the past few years. Regions outside the USA have begun to prosper while non-traditional production companies such as Netflix have assumed a larger market share and online movies adapted from literature have continued to gain in popularity. How have these trends shaped the global film industry? This book answers this question by analyzing an increasingly globalized business through a global lens. Development of the Global Film Industry examines the recent history and current state of the business in all parts of the world. While many existing studies focus on the internal workings of the industry, such as production, distribution and screening, this study takes a "big picture" view, encompassing the transnational integration of the cultural and entertainment industry as a whole, and pays more attention to the coordinated development of the film industry in the light of influence from literature, television, animation, games and other sectors. This volume is a critical reference for students, scholars and the public to help them understand the major trends facing the global film industry in today’s world.

Looking back through the prism of the severe economic crisis for filmmaking in the 1980s, The Film Industry in Brazil explores the unusual relationship between the state-supported industry, which often produced politically radical films, and the authoritarian regime that had held sway for twenty years. To ground his analysis, Johnson covers the early years of the film industry, 1898-1930; attempts at industrialization during the 1930s and 1940s; film industry congresses and government film boards, 1950-1966; the National Film Institute, 1966-1975; and the expansion of the state's role from 1969 through 1980. Well-conceived, carefully researched and documented, Johnson's study fills a major gap in film studies by tracing the development of this industry in Brazil, focusing specifically on its relationship to the state.

Italian cinema triumphed globally in the 1960, with directors such as Rossellini, Fellini, and Leone, and actors like Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni known to audiences around the world. But by the end of the 1980s, the Italian film industry was all but dead. The Rise and Fall of the Italian Film Industry traces the rise of the industry from its origins in the 19th century to its worldwide success in the 1960s, and its rapid decline in the subsequent decades. It does so by looking at cinema as an institution – subject to the interplay between the spheres of art, business, and politics at the national and international level. By examining the roles of a wide range of stakeholders (including film directors, producers, exhibitors, the public, and the critics) as well as the system of funding and the influence of governments, author Marina Nicoli demonstrates that the Italian film industry succeeded when all three spheres were aligned, but suffered and ultimately failed when they each pursued contradictory objectives. This in-depth case study makes an important contribution to the long-standing debate about promoting and protecting domestic cultures, particularly in the face of culturally dominant and politically- and economically-powerful creative industries from the United States. The Rise and Fall of the Italian Film Industry will be of particular interest to business and economic historians, cinema historians, media specialists, and cultural economists.

Upon its original publication in 1976, "The American Film Industry" was welcomed by film students, scholars, and fans as the first systematic and unified history of the American movie industry. Now this indispensible anthology has been expanded and revised to include a fresh introductory overview by editor Tino Balio and ten new chapters that explore such topics as the growth of exhibition as big business, the mode of production for feature films, the star as market strategy, and the changing economics and structure of contemporary entertainment companies. The result is a unique collection of essays, more comprehensive and current than ever, that reveals how the American movie industry really worked in a century of constant change-from kinetoscopes and the coming of sound to the star system, 1950s blacklisting, and today's corporate empires.

Fifty theoretical essays by distinctively original and influential film critics and filmmakers are grouped in categories having to do with general considerations, structuralism-semiology, political factors, genre, feminism, auteur theory, and mise-en-scene

Brings together an introduction to academic study of audiences as 'readers' of films and an investigation into how the film industry perceives audiences as part of its industrial practices. The appraoch draws on ideas from film, media and cultural studies to present an insight to what makes the biggest box office films attractive to audiences.

This study looks at how the movie industry organisation functioned between the late ‘40s and 1983 when it was originally published. It describes the changing role of domestic exhibition through this time and analyses the wider film industry to provide a model of the exhibition structure in relation to production, distribution and outside factors. It addresses the growing issues of the cable and video markets as competition to the film exhibition business at that time and looks forward into a highly turbulent environment. With particular interest now as the film industry address a new range of threats and adaptations of its working structure, this book offers and integral understanding of a key stage in cinema history.

Argentina fell in love with movies as soon as they were first exhibited in 1896. Even before World War I, Argentina was one of the biggest film markets in the world and continues to be a major film market today. This history of the Argentine film industry--starting with the earliest film exhibitions in 1897--covers film music, broadcasting, the introduction of film with sound, the impact of the American film industry on the Argentine, the industrialization of Argentine film, Hollywood films in Spanish, the tango in film and local stars. Reference material includes filmographic information and reviews from numerous publications. Photographs offer a look at film stills, promotions, and the people involved in the industry, and an index provides quick access to names and titles.

A comprehensive history of the international movie industry during the 20th century. Essays examine the film industries of 19 countries focusing on individual national movie industries' economic, social, aesthetic, technological and political/ideological development within an international context.