CfE 45 - For a Multipolar History of the Film Industries: Centre-Periphery Relations in the Cold War Years

2024-07-03

Call for Essays for the thematic section of Cinéma & Cie no. 45, edited by Giorgio Avezzù, Francesco Di Chiara and Paolo Noto. Deadline for abstract proposals: September 30, 2024.

 

In a groundbreaking study of European cinema, Thomas Elsaesser reflected on how European cinema has often been defined by comparison with the Hollywood (Elsaesser 2005). Taking the Hollywood studio system as the only term of comparison has affected not only the symbolic and aesthetic forms, but also the ways in which historiography has conceived the study of film industries. This comparison has been especially true since the publication of Janet Staiger’s pioneering work on classical Hollywood’s modes of production, which provided a blueprint for understanding national film industries in terms of evolution toward a standard model of vertical integration revolving around the role of producers to systems built upon specific unit packages of production.

Recent comparative studies of film industries and networks, influenced by new cinema history, have revealed that many peripheral cinemas, from India to Turkey, from Italy to Sweden, from Poland to Mexico, share many more elements with each other than they do with the standard supposedly identified with the Hollywood studio system. These commonalities include whether that be in terms of protectionist measures, state intervention, fragmented industrial landscape, or reliance on independent regional distribution (e.g., Sedgwick 2022; Mehta & Mukherjee 2020). Even the supposed dominance of Hollywood, which is most evident in runaway productions, sometimes resulted in a system of exchange in which national industries were both exploited and benefited by American capital (Steinhart 2019). Recent research on the subject has thus prompted further questions. How do peripheral industries relate to each other? Do they connect autonomously, and/or via the “center” of the system? What formal and informal arrangements are made between them? How does an image of a multipolar world circulate through professionals, technologies, and represented places? What are the barriers to and possibilities of artistic and professional exchanges among peripheral industries with respects to Hollywood?

This journal issue aims to address these and other questions within the period of time that goes from the end of the Second World War and to the end of the Cold War. This was a period of relative economic and political stability, over the course of which throughout which the cinema industry, still the dominant form of screen entertainment, saw the emergence of a multipolar environment where the hegemony of Hollywood in Europe was counterbalanced by the Soviet bloc and its influence on Central and Eastern European cinemas; it was also a critical period for the consolidation of other highly influential film industries. Finally, it was during this extended period that the foundations were laid for a system of managing relations between nation-states and the film industry in the form of co-productions and cooperations, which became increasingly harmonised from the 1990s onwards.

This call for essays for Cinéma&Cie special issue “For a Multipolar History of the Film Industries: Centre-Periphery Relations in the Cold War Years” is conceived within the scope of the PRIN 2022 project TRAFFIC – Tracing American and Foreign Funds in Italian Cinema (1945-1962). Topics of interest include:

  • The impact of Hollywood on the creation and development of national film industries
  • The reaction of peripheral film industries to Hollywood’s hegemony: Policies, protectionism and international relations
  • Transnational circulation of professionals, capital and currency, technologies
  • Transnational investment in foreign studio assets and spillover effects
  • The impact of international relations on the censorship process
  • Neo-colonial relations between national film industries
  • Relationships between the film sector and other industries in the international circulation of non-film-related goods and services
  • Questions of geographical and cultural representation: How international relations help to select and negotiate creative and textual aspects of films (e.g., recurring cast, themes and narratives, the location market)

References

Elsaesser, Th. (2005) European Cinema: Face to Face to Hollywood. Amsterdam: AUP.
Bordwell, D., Staiger, J. & Thompson, K. (1985) The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. London & New York: Routledge.
Mehta, M. & Mukherjee, M. (2020) Industrial Networks and Cinemas of India. Shooting Stars, Shifting Geographies and Multiplying Media. Abingdon: Routledge.
Sedgwick, J. (ed.) (2022) Towards a Comparative Economic History of Cinema, 1930–1970. Cham: Springer.
Steinhart, D. (2019) Runaway Hollywood: Internationalizing Postwar Production and Location Shooting. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Submission details

Please send a 400-word abstract in English or in French, comprising up to 5 bibliographical references, 5 keywords, and a 150-word biographical note to giorgio.avezzu@unibg.it, francesco.dichiara@uniecampus.it and paolo.noto2@unibo.it by 30 September 2024. Notifications of acceptance will be emailed no later than 15 October 2024. If the proposal is accepted, a 6,000/7,000-word essay must be submitted for double-blind peer review by the end of March 2025.