Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Motion picture industry – economic aspects'

This dissertation examines the representations of Casablanca in Moroccan cinema and their articulation of postcolonial subjectivity since the 1990s. To overcome a deep economic recession and simmering social unrest in the early 1980s, Morocco embarked on a comprehensive programme of structural adjustment policies under the aegis of the International Monetary Fund. Market reforms ushered in novel forms of spatial development and social relations in Moroccan cities over the next decades. In the cultural field, a popular cinema emerged in the early 1990s and has projected the complex structures of everyday life in urban space. The New Urban Cinema (NUC) has anchored national cinema in the everyday life and affective economy of a society in transition. The country’s largest city, Casablanca, is the setting for some of NUC’s most original portrayals of the Moroccan subject under globalisation. Taking space, affect and violence as intertwined sites of film analysis, my research project closely examines the new forms of postcolonial subjectivity that have evolved in Morocco through this cinema. Twenty films are read against the backdrop of neoliberal Casablanca and the social, economic as well as political transformation of Morocco and the world under globalisation. The dissertation combines close textual analysis with a cultural studies perspective, which situates films in their historical contexts of production and reception in Morocco and beyond. Drawing on postcolonial, film and urban studies, my aim is to contribute to interdisciplinary scholarship on cinematic responses to neoliberal globalisation, and to a social history of contemporary Morocco.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Discipline of Economics, University of Sydney, [2006?].
Title from title screen (viewed 27th June, 2007). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Discipline of Economics, University of Sydney. Degree awarded 2006?; thesis submitted 2005. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

During this period the state's interest in the film industry took several different forms. The area of films policy explored in this thesis is the economic protection of the commercial film industry against the high percentage of American films screened in Britain and the Empire. I begin in 1925 because it was not until then that active steps were taken by the government, in response to agitation from producers and those who saw film as a bond of Empire and advertisement for British goods and 'way of life', leading to the Cinematograph Films Act, 1927. This proposed, for political, cultural, moral and economic reasons, that renters and exhibitors should acquire and show a percentage of British films. There was no subsidy for producers or a heavy duty levied on American film imports. The origins, impact and character of official film policy are explored in the thesis with particular attention to financial and political aspects. An attempt is made to explain why policy was limited to film quotas together with an assessment of their impact on the industry's economic development. Details are also given on how the film industry's affairs became caught up in wider debates on tariff policy in the 1920s and in Anglo-American relations ten years later. The first three chapters deal with the evolution, promulgation and initial impact of the Cinematograph Films Act, 1927. Chapter 4 examines the deliberations of the Moyne Committee, established in 1936 to review the film industry's progress. The last three chapters analyse the three major influences on policy during the making of the 1938 Films Act: the campaigns of British film trade interests; the state of Anglo-American relations and film finance. In the final assessment the major influences that shaped policy are outlined together with conclusions on the industry's position and problems on the eve of the Second World War.

From the polluted canals of turn-of-the-century Birmingham, England, William Moxley is an ineffectual captain of industry burning for a Music Hall life. With his unlikely bride Elvina in tow, he journeys to the west coast of the United States, only to shipwreck against his lifelong dream--a vaudeville hall called "The Sunshine." In "Dear Clara," a depression-era love story, Warren Wilkerson has been a Sunshine fixture since the age of six; suddenly forced out by the theatre's back-stabbing, bootlegging "owner," Warren must resort to desperate measures in order to pay for his dying wife's insulin. Freewheeling philosopher Holly Jo is a Seattleite sausage cart owner with a bun in the oven. Having recently lost her parents, she forges a new family from the fringes of 1974 arthouse--it's "The Labor of Holly Jo Daffodil." In "Chapter Eleven," foul-mouthed Red--the Helios's manager--learns that his boss is selling out to evil Emerald Cinemas; the news triggers a long-overdue heart attack, which turns out to be the least of his worries. Beginning with the birth of the feature length and ending at the onset of the digital age, Cinerati is a comic salute to the celluloid era--a grand era spanning over a century. Featuring an eccentric ensemble where a bit player in one decade can take a lead role in the next, Cinerati celebrates the venues in which cinema was meant to be seen, and the strange families that pop up wherever the projectors flicker.

This dissertation challenges how Hollywood is typically imagined as monolithic, homogenous and homogenising, and separated from other cinemas by fixed and impermeable borders. This influential cinematic paradigm posits a centre-periphery model underpinned by binary oppositions in which most cinemas are negatively defined as Hollywood’s ‘other’ and perceived as fixed in permanent states of opposition and assimilation. It is a perception reinforced by the influential critical paradigm which focuses on the films’ formal stylistic and narrative properties. This conceptualisation ignores, or fails to observe, the larger picture, in which global, national and local cinemas relate to each other in complex and volatile ways. My argument is that a paradigm shift is required in which the main question asked is not ‘What is Hollywood?’ but ‘Where is Hollywood?’ Location is a crux of my argument because it offers a way of questioning the widespread conception of Hollywood as bounded and fixed in a stable cultural landscape. I apply Arjun Appadurai’s framework of disjunctive global cultural flows to the analysis of cinema to show the existence of a more dynamic and chaotic screenscape than is popularly imagined. I also develop a new model of textual analysis involving traces and tracings. This troubles the notion of impermeable borders by finding the traces of global cultural flows within the film frame and tracing their trajectories outside the frame to and from their points of origin and destination. From the creative tensions caused by these asymmetrical and, multidirectional flows a previously unobserved screenscape emerges in which it is possible to see globalising processes as hybridising processes. Within this interpretive framework Hollywood is decentred and can no longer be perceived as fixed and bounded, or as the paradigm by which most cinemas define themselves and are judged. It reveals that heterogeneity and flux rather than homogeneity and fixity characterise intercinematic relations. It shows the existence of porous borders permitting transnational flows. In linking a film’s formal stylistic properties to the disjunctions in the global flows, the new model I develop for textual analysis offers a way of re-imagining Hollywood within the transnational imaginary.

The Canadian government introduced its Multicultural and Employment Equity policies in a series of attempts to induce federally-controlled institutions to reflect the racial diversity of the Canadian population in their programs and workforces. This is a case study of one institution's response to these policies. It examines the implementation of the six-year New Initiatives in Film (NIF) program begun in 1990 by the now-defunct women's filmmaking unit, Studio D of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and exposes the fault lines along which the goals of the NFB's various constituent parts clashed and meshed with the diverse goals of various parties in NIF's target communities (i.e. "emergent aboriginal and 'of colour' women filmmakers"). I argue that because the NIF program was structured according to the politics of identity ("race" in this case), "artworld" issues of unfair hiring and funding practices in the Canadian film industry, became distorted and expressed as issues of identity. Obfuscating the professional dynamics in the world of Canadian filmmaking by using "race" as an organizing principle did not, in the long-term, assure the sustained inclusion of excluded groups within mainstream institutions. A more effective strategy, the data suggests, would have been for underrepresented groups to cultivate alliances with professionals in the filmmaking industry based on concrete occupational, rather than hypothetical race-based interests.

Aiming to make an intervention in critical theory, film-philosophy and British Cinema scholarship, this thesis investigates what a marriage of Lacanian and Badiouian theories of the subject can bring to the study of the radical British feature film of 1968: films which in differing ways represent the political and intellectual debates current in the culture. The question of what can be learnt through an analysis situated within theories of the subject has not been addressed within British Cinema studies. Psychoanalytic film theory in its previous incarnations utilised a section of Lacan's thought in order to focus on the ways in which the spectator was placed into a subject position by the unseen workings of the apparatus. Furthermore, the limited amount of Badiouian film scholarship is concerned with whether films can be thought philosophically. A fuller use of Lacan with Badiou as a hermeneutic model to address films from a specific period and context creates a new interpretive model on the porous boundary between critical theory and film-philosophy. This thesis utilises Lacan's categories of the Imaginary, Symbolic and, predominantly, the Real alongside the Badiouian Event to interrogate the ways in which Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (Karel Reisz, 1966), Privilege (Peter Watkins, 1967), Herostratus (Don Levy, 1967), Performance (Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, 1970) and if ... (Lindsay Anderson, 1968) represent the radical subject of 1968, in order to argue for the efficacy of ideological critique, to think politically about cinema, and advocate the continuing resonance of the period in contemporary praxis.

本文提出「影像/形象資本」作為考察影像/形象、資本及權間關係的工具。「影像/形象資本」發展至自布爾迪卮的文化資本，但「影像/形象」資本把焦點放在視覺或形象資源如何在文化/經濟、生產/消費以及上層建築/下層建構界線越趨模糊的符號空間經濟主導代，成為文化場域中新的權資源。
透過考察橫店影視城一個結合影視生產及遊的中國影城生產地域化及經濟符號化的過程，本文嘗試對「影像/形象資本」的概作深入的分析。沿著布爾迪卮的框架，影視城被視為一個由擁有同影像/形象資本的能動者構成的場域，而這些能動者自在地及跨境的生產及消費網絡。在橫店影視城生產、積與轉換的過程的探中，本文嘗試回答：一)影像/形象在文化場域中的功能及其轉換為經濟或其他資本的條件；二) 影像/形象資本在國際文化分工成員中的分佈以及其結構對影像資本的價值及轉換的影響。第一條問題旨在闡釋經濟符號化的過程，第二條問題則希望剖析影像/形象與資本主義結下的地域分工以及動政治。作為一個可以同時探究影像帶的可能性及限制的概，影像/形象資本把媒介影像的研究，從批判學派對影像呈現的控制及霸權形成，展至影像對同能動者、以至在符號經濟時代中冒升的社會機構所產生的建設性及壓迫性的權的多重探索。
This thesis develops the concept of image capital to investigate the relationship between image, capital and power. Image capital is built on Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, but looks specifically into how visual and imagery resources becomes a power at stake in the cultural field at the juncture of the economies of signs and space featured by growing convergence of culture and the economy and subsequent blurring of the boundaries between base/superstructure and production/consumption.
The concept of image capital is examined through the case study of the spatialization and the semioticization processes of Hengdian World Studios, a China studio complex that serves domestic and international film and TV productions and operates film studio tourism. The studio, as a case, is theorized as a field which is constituted by different agents with various forms of image capital, including those embedded in local as well as transnational production and consumption networks. The processes of production, accumulation and conversion of image capital at the field of Hengdian World Studios are investigated to chart 1) how image functions as a form of capital at stake in the cultural field and how it can be converted into other forms of capital; 2) how the distribution of image capital is structured amongst agents in the field and how this structure influences the value and conversion rate image capital to other forms of capital. The first question aims at studying the semioticization process, whilst the second attempts to scrutinize the spatialization and the labor politics underpinning the alliance of image and capitalism. By theorizing image as Bourdieusean form of capital and examining both its enabling possibilities and constraints, this thesis sheds light on the study of media images by steering beyond ideological control to both the productive and repressive power of images onto different agents as well as the social intuitions of the up and rising economies of sign and space.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Chow, Pui Ha.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves [419-439]).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract also in Chinese.
ABSTRACT
摘要
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TABLE OF CONTENT
Chapter CHAPTER I --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter CHAPTER II --- Image and Capitalism --- p.21
Marx's capital and critical media theories on image studies --- p.21
Political economies of signs and the media --- p.26
Implications of the political economy of signs on critical Marxist media theories --- p.31
Alternative frameworks for the study of image and capitalism: End of Production and Labor or NICL? Or Bridging capital and labor in image production and consumption? --- p.38
Chapter CHAPTER III --- Bourdieu's Capital, Field and Habitus --- p.51
Bourdieu's concept of Capital --- p.52
Field and Habitus --- p.63
Theoretical implications of habitus and field of Bouredieusean capital --- p.71
Chapter CHAPTER IV --- Field Theory of Cultural Production and the Political Economy of Signs --- p.76
The field of cultural production --- p.77
The field of cultural production and the political economies of signs and space --- p.91
Image Capital and the political economies of signs and space --- p.105
Chapter CHAPTER V --- Image Capital, Field and Film Studio --- p.112
Intercontextuality: Contextual knowledge, globalization and field --- p.113
Film Studio, image capital and field --- p.117
Research question, design and method --- p.124
Chapter CHAPTER VI --- The Development of Film Studio Complex --- p.135
The emergence of film studio complex in the global field --- p.135
Transformation of China's National Field of Cultural Production --- p.144
Conclusion: Studio complex, image capital, and field of cultural production --- p.170
Chapter CHAPTER VII --- Spatialization: Hengdian as a Field of Cultural Production --- p.176
Iron Road: co-production, image capital, and boundaries negotations --- p.179
Hengdian World Studios as Image Factory --- p.192
Conclusion: the image factory flying beyond the place --- p.219
Chapter CHAPTER VIII --- Semioticization: Capitalizing Image and the Mediation of Production and Consumption --- p.227
Image capital and film-induced tourism --- p.228
Capitalizing image at Hengdian World Studios --- p.237
Key Image Labors --- p.252
Chinese Hollywood: the negotiations and struggles in the capitalization of the global and the national imagination --- p.261
Conclusion --- p.271
Chapter CHAPTER IX --- Image Capital and Tourist Consumption: Gaze, Class and Prosumption --- p.275
Image capital and tourist consumption --- p.276
Tourist gaze at Hengdian World Studios --- p.284
Image Capital, class and prosumption --- p.314
Chapter CHAPTER X --- Image Capital and Place-Making --- p.339
Hardware make-up: physical infrastructure engineering --- p.341
Software make-up: lifestyle formation --- p.345
Place branding --- p.365
Chapter CHAPTER XI --- Conclusion: Image, Capital and Power --- p.372
Image as capital --- p.374
Forms of image capital --- p.376
Functions of image capital --- p.382
Image capital: semioticization and spatialization --- p.400

In 1997, DVD was introduced to the American public, beginning the fastest diffusion of any consumer electronics product in history. In this dissertation, I show how DVD, via favorable conditions in industry, technology, culture, economics, and the regulatory environment, replaced existing home video and computing technologies while transforming home entertainment. I analyze how DVD was successfully developed and commercialized by member firms in the filmed entertainment, consumer electronics, and computing industries from 1994-2002. I demonstrate how a new industry developed around DVD through unprecedented cooperation between these three industries. This study uses trade publications, mainstream press reports, industry data, advertisements, depositions to congress, and published interviews with industry members to analyze a process that has been understudied by scholars. Through the use of these resources, I explore how demand for the technology developed within existing contexts and how myriad forces aligned to enable the emergence of a new disc technology. Furthermore, I demonstrate how DVD reshaped these contexts while transforming the nature and business of filmed content distribution. DVD initiated a new era for digital content distribution. This era was marked by the convergence of three industries, new levels of access to filmed entertainment, mobilized viewing opportunities, the conflation of the computer and the television set, and heightened efforts to protect content through a variety of legal, regulatory, and technological strategies.

by Chu Lui.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 351-354).
ABSTRACT --- p.ii-iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT --- p.v
LIST OF FIGURES --- p.vi-vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS --- p.viii
CHAPTERS
Chapter PART I --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter PART II --- Theoretical formulation on exhibitors' structuration of movie-going activity --- p.30
Chapter 2 --- Approaches from existing film studies --- p.31
Chapter 3 --- Structuration: social practices and social structure --- p.49
Chapter 4 --- An analytical application of the structuration theory in Cinema --- p.73
Chapter 5 --- An analytical application of structuarion theory in exhibitors' restructuration of movie-going activity --- p.91
Chapter PART III --- The reflector's self-reflection --- p.105
Chapter 6 --- "My general knowledge of Chinese Cinema's development in ""reform""" --- p.109
Chapter 7 --- Procedures of data collection and analysis PART IV Redefining what cinema is --- p.127
Chapter PART IV --- Redefing what cinema is --- p.149
Chapter 8 --- Confusion over a simple matter --- p.150
Chapter 9 --- Delineating a new landscape of the cinema --- p.165
Chapter 10 --- "In name, in language, in ""affairs""" --- p.195
Chapter PART V --- Redefining what movie-viewing is --- p.224
Chapter 11 --- A comparison on two kinds of movie-viewing --- p.225
Chapter 12 --- Reconstructing movie-viewing space --- p.249
Chapter 13 --- Reconstructing movie-viewing time --- p.281
Chapter PART VI --- Conclusions: on exhibitors' shadow land --- p.303
REFERENCES --- p.351

This dissertation challenges how Hollywood is typically imagined as monolithic, homogenous and homogenising, and separated from other cinemas by fixed and impermeable borders. This influential cinematic paradigm posits a centre-periphery model underpinned by binary oppositions in which most cinemas are negatively defined as Hollywood’s ‘other’ and perceived as fixed in permanent states of opposition and assimilation. It is a perception reinforced by the influential critical paradigm which focuses on the films’ formal stylistic and narrative properties. This conceptualisation ignores, or fails to observe, the larger picture, in which global, national and local cinemas relate to each other in complex and volatile ways. My argument is that a paradigm shift is required in which the main question asked is not ‘What is Hollywood?’ but ‘Where is Hollywood?’ Location is a crux of my argument because it offers a way of questioning the widespread conception of Hollywood as bounded and fixed in a stable cultural landscape. I apply Arjun Appadurai’s framework of disjunctive global cultural flows to the analysis of cinema to show the existence of a more dynamic and chaotic screenscape than is popularly imagined. I also develop a new model of textual analysis involving traces and tracings. This troubles the notion of impermeable borders by finding the traces of global cultural flows within the film frame and tracing their trajectories outside the frame to and from their points of origin and destination. From the creative tensions caused by these asymmetrical and, multidirectional flows a previously unobserved screenscape emerges in which it is possible to see globalising processes as hybridising processes. Within this interpretive framework Hollywood is decentred and can no longer be perceived as fixed and bounded, or as the paradigm by which most cinemas define themselves and are judged. It reveals that heterogeneity and flux rather than homogeneity and fixity characterise intercinematic relations. It shows the existence of porous borders permitting transnational flows. In linking a film’s formal stylistic properties to the disjunctions in the global flows, the new model I develop for textual analysis offers a way of re-imagining Hollywood within the transnational imaginary.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)