"In this industry reflection I draw on my professional interest in Brazilian film production an distribution and my archival research of Brazilian films exhibited in the UK between 1995 and 2019 in order to reflect on the factors which help such productions travel and the challenges which they face.
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During the last twenty-five years, following the so-called renaissance of Brazilian cinema, there has been a constant increase in the number of films shown in Brazilian cinemas but, to achieve financial sustainability, filmmakers had to look abroad as well. While the search for financing and partners in other countries should allow the creation of works that possess storytelling appeal and more inviting identities to circulate internationally, the majority of Brazilian films released on UK screens rely on stereotypical depictions, well-known authors and/or powerful international distribution companies. Brazilian national institutions, such as Ancine, and international festivals, such as BFI London Film Festival (LFF), have helped increase visibility for Brazilian productions abroad but more could be done to foster new directorial voices, release strategies and coproduction partnerships." (Abstract)
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"Als sich Ende der 1920er Jahre in den USA und Europa der Tonfilm durchsetzte, erkannten ägyptische Geschäftsleute dessen Potenzial für die arabische Welt. Sie erwarben innovative Tontechnik aus Deutschland und schickten ägyptische Stipendiaten zur Ausbildung nach Berlin und Paris. Nach ihrer R
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ckkehr schufen diese gemeinsam mit europäischen Filmschaffenden eine Traumfabrik nach dem Vorbild Hollywoods. In diesem Umfeld entstanden die ersten ägyptischen Tonfilme, die ab Mitte der 1930er Jahre weltweit zirkulierten. Manche dieser Spielfilme gelten in Ägypten als Klassiker, während sie in den europäischen Filmgeschichtsbüchern selten Erwähnung finden. Ausgehend von diesem Missverhältnis untersucht die Autorin die Entstehung, Verwertung und Rezeption dreier ägyptischer Tonfilme der 1930er bis 1950er Jahre aus transnationaler Perspektive. Ihre historisch fundierten Analysen zeigen, dass besonders die auf Zelluloid gebannten orientalischen Klänge für europäische Ohren befremdend wirkten, während sie in Ägypten maßgeblich zum Erfolg beitrugen. Um die von einander abweichende Wahrnehmung zu beleuchten, macht die Autorin den Begriff der «Atmosphäre» für ihre transnationale Rezeptionsstudie fruchtbar. Erstmals rücken damit Filme in den Blick, die dem Goldenen Zeitalter des ägyptischen Films der 1950er Jahre den Weg bereiteten, in Europa bislang aber kaum gewürdigt wurden. Im Mittelpunkt der Analyse stehen die Filme Wedad (Wedad the Slave, 1936, Lashin (Verräter am Nil), 1938 und Raya w Sekina (Der Frauenwürger von Kairo),1953." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"This book examines transformations in the production and domestic and international reception of Iranian cinema between 2000 and 2013 through the intersection of the political markers - the presidential terms of Reformist president Mohammad Khatami and his successor, the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadi
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nejad - and filmic markers, particularly Jafar Panahi's The Circle (2000) and Asghar Farhadi's About Elly (2009). Through extensive field and media research, the book considers the interaction of a range of factors including government policy, Iranian national cinema genres and categories, intended audience, funding source, and domestic and international reception, to demonstrate the interplay between filmmakers and the government over these two successive presidencies. While the impact of politics on Iranian filmmaking has been widely examined, this work argues for a more nuanced understanding of politics in and of the Iranian cinema than has generally been previously acknowledged." (Publisher description)
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"Indian Film Stars offers original insights and important reappraisals of film stardom in India from the early talkie era of the 1930s to the contemporary period of global blockbusters. The collection represents a substantial intervention to our understanding of the development of film star cultures
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in India during the 20th and 21st centuries. The contributors seek to inspire and inform further inquiries into the histories of film stardom-the industrial construction and promotion of star personalities, the actual labouring and imagined lifestyles of professional stars, the stars' relationship to specific aesthetic cinematic conventions (such as frontality and song-dance) and production technologies (such as the play-back system and post-synchronization), and audiences' investment in and devotion to specific star bodies-across the country's multiple centres of film production and across the overlapping (and increasingly international) zones of the films' distribution and reception. The star images, star bodies and star careers discussed are examined in relation to a wide range of issues, including the negotiation and contestation of tradition and modernity, the embodiment and articulation of both Indian and non-Indian values and vogues; the representation of gender and sexuality, of race and ethnicity, and of cosmopolitan mobility and transnational migration; innovations and conventions in performance style; the construction and transformation of public persona; the star's association with film studios and the mainstream media; the star's relationship with historical, political and cultural change and memory; and the star's meaning and value for specific (including marginalised) sectors of the audience." (Publisher description)
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"In one of the first cultural acts to follow independence in 1975, Frelimo's new socialist government of Mozambique set up a National Institute of Cinema (the INC). In a country where many people had little previous experience of cinema, the INC was tasked to "deliver to the people an image of the p
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eople". This book explores how this unique culture of revolutionary filmmaking began during the armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism. Following independence, the INC began the task of decolonising the film industry, building on networks of solidarity with other socialist and non-aligned struggles. Mozambique became an epicentre for militant filmmakers from around the world and cinema played an essential role in building the new nation. Crucially, the book examines how filmmaking became a resource for resistance against Apartheid as the Cold War played out across Southern Africa during the late 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on detailed film analysis, production histories and testimonies of key participants, Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution provides a compelling account of this radical experiment in harnessing cinema to social change." (Publisher description)
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"Iranian filmmakers have long been recognised for creating a vibrant, aesthetically rich cinema whilst working under strict state censorship regulations. As Michelle Langford reveals, many have found indirect, allegorical ways of expressing forbidden topics and issues in their films. But for many, a
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llegory is much more than a foil against haphazardly applied censorship rules. Drawing on a long history of allegorical expression in Persian poetry and the arts, allegory has become an integral part of the poetics of Iranian cinema. Allegory in Iranian Cinema explores the allegorical aesthetics of Iranian cinema, explaining how it has emerged from deep cultural traditions and how it functions as a strategy for both supporting and resisting dominant ideology. As well as tracing the roots of allegory in Iranian cinema before and after the 1979 revolution, Langford also theorizes this cinematic mode. She draws on a range of cinematic, philosophical and cultural concepts - developed by thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Christian Metz and Vivian Sobchack - to provide a theoretical framework for detailed analyses of films by renowned directors of the pre-and post-revolutionary eras including Masoud Kimiai, Dariush Mehrjui, Ebrahim Golestan, Kamran Shirdel, Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi, Marziyeh Meshkini, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Asghar Farhadi." (Publisher description)
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"By critically examining how trauma theory and subaltern studies have previously been applied to testimonial cinema, Garibotto rereads Argentinian films produced since 1983 and calls for an alternate interpretive framework at the intersection of semiotics, theories of affect, scholarship on hegemony
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, and the ideological uses of documentary and fiction. She argues that recurrent concepts—such as trauma, mourning, memory, and subalternity—miss how testimonial films have changed over time, shifting from subaltern narratives to official, hegemonic, and iconic accounts. Her work highlights the urgent need to continue to study these types of narratives, particularly at a time when military dictatorships have become entrenched in Latin America and memory narratives proliferate worldwide. Although Argentina is Garibotto's focus, her theory can be adapted to other contexts in which narratives about recent political conflicts have shifted from alternative versions of history to official, hegemonic accounts—such as in Spanish, Chilean, Uruguayan, Brazilian, South African, and Holocaust testimonies. Garibotto's study of testimonial cinema moves us to pursue a broader ideological analysis of the links between film and historical representation." (Publisher description)
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"Following a summary of secondary and primary sources on the subject of film production in Burma, I will present an overview of the history of the Burmese film industry, from the British colonial period, to independence, to the years of the Burmese Socialist Program Party, and then the SLORC/SPDC ye
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ars of strict censorship. I will then turn to the 2000s, the advent of the Yangon Film School, and finally the blossoming of film festivals in the past decade. With the public presentation of films, which no longer require the same level of approval from the censor board as they did in years past, filmmakers have increasingly been able to openly discuss social issues in the country, though some circumstances will curtail that openness, and controversial topics can still be off-limits. Through recent interviews with contemporary filmmakers, this chapter will discuss the ways in which they see the relationship between film, documentary, and social change in Myanmar." (Page 288)
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"The volume is divided into three parts, focusing respectively on historical periodizations, categories that share formal characteristics, and structural elements involved in the production, distribution, and reception of the works themselves. In historical terms, topics range from the birth of Chin
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ese cinema at the beginning of the twentieth century to the present moment, and include discussions of several periods that have hitherto not yet received much detailed analysis—including Manchurian cinema from the 1930s and 1940s, and Mainland Chinese cinema from the Maoist period. In formal terms, topics range from familiar cinematic genres such as the opera film and the war film, to newer techno-formal configurations such as small-screen and large-screen cinemas. In structural terms, topics range acting and directing to the practices of reenactments and remakes. Neither the volume as a whole, its three main parts, nor any of its individual chapters pretends to present an encyclopedic overview of its corresponding topic. Instead, our objective is to explore the interpretive spaces that open up at the interstices of various existing conceptions of the shape of the field. It is here, we contend, that we may find the key to a richer understanding not only of a singular “Chinese cinema,” but more importantly of an eclectic body of mutually overlapping Chinese cinemas." (Publisher description)
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"Based on detailed onsite observation of documentary production, circulation practices and the analysis of film texts, this book identifies independence as a 'tactical practice', contesting the normative definitions and functions assigned to culture, cultural production and producers in a neoliberal
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economic system." (Publisher description)
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"Le présent ouvrage s'intéresse à la socio-économie de l'audiovisuel au Maroc. Il dresse un panorama des différents questionnements qui concernent le secteur de l'audiovisuel, ses acteurs institutionnels et économiques, ainsi que la dynamique qui les anime. De précieux renseignements y sont f
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ournis sur des sujets divers affectant le quotidien des Marocains: les modes de financement de l'audiovisuel; l'impact de la couverture publicitaire; la diffusion en TNT; la convergence technologique et l'innovation; les spécificités des usages du mois de Ramadan pour l'économie audiovisuelle; le rôle de l'État et de la libéralisation; la promotion de la citoyenneté et de la diversité culturelle amazigh; les réseaux sociaux et les nouveaux outils de développement du secteur audiovisuel marocain. Autant de questions auxquelles l'auteur apporte les réponses les plus appropriées." (Description de la maison d'édition)
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"Im Februar 2015 hat Jayro Bustamante an den Filmfestspielen Berlin den Silbernen Bären für seinen ersten Spielfilm «Ixcanul» gewonnen. Gleichzeitig hat sich mit dem Film ein lateinamerikanisches Land auf der Landkarte des Kinos eingetragen. Walter Ruggle wirft einen Blick auf die Situation des
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Kinos in Guatemala, wo Jayro Bustamante sich auch für die Verbreitung von Filmen über das Projekt eines Kino-Busses engagiert." (Seite 31)
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"A Companion to Russian Cinema provides an exhaustive and carefully organised guide to the cinema of pre-Revolutionary Russia, of the Soviet era, as well as post-Soviet Russian cinema, edited by one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies. The most up-to-date and
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thorough coverage of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, which also effectively fills gaps in the existing scholarship in the field. This is the first volume on Russian cinema to explore specifically the history of movie theatres, studios, and educational institutions. The editor is one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies, and contributions come from leading experts in the field of Russian Studies, Film Studies and Visual Culture. Chapters consider the arts of scriptwriting, sound, production design, costumes and cinematography. Provides five portraits of key figures in Soviet and Russia film history, whose works have been somewhat neglecte." (Publisher description)
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"Documentary film is proving to be a particularly complex tool for the Kurdish social and political existence, as Kurds lack the official tools of history-writing and cultural preservation that are categorically associated with the capacities of a state. By delving into Kurdish documentary films as
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products of complex societal, political, and historical processes, the articles in the volume highlight the intersections of media production, film text, and audience reception, and expand on vibrant debates in the field of film and media studies through situated case studies." (Publisher description)
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