Film Economics

L’economia del film è un’area di ricerca relativamente giovane e in espansione dedicata all’industria cinematografica e allo studio delle logiche che governano le sue attività. Il volume analizza i processi di finanziamento, produzione, distribuzione e circolazione dei film, il mercato cinematografico, i protagonisti tradizionali e di più recente comparsa che operano nel settore (come Netflix e Amazon), e la complessa rete di politiche europee, nazionali e locali che regolamentano e sostengono il sistema, soffermandosi di volta in volta a riflettere sulle diverse forme di valore che il film assume per gli stakeholder coinvolti. Il film è infatti un prodotto complesso, su cui convergono interessi pubblici e privati diversificati, istanze artistiche ed economiche, frutto di un processo che si declina in maniera differente a seconda della cultura produttiva di cui è espressione. Questa complessità da una parte articola il ruolo che il film ricopre all’interno del sistema economico e della società contemporanea; dall’altra rende più che mai complesso quantificare e determinare il suo successo.

Soutenu par le Labex ICCA, ce séminaire entend contribuer à fédérer, dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire, un ensemble de travaux se proposant d’étudier les films ou les cinémas dits « de genre », tout en réfléchissant aux différents sens de ce qualificatif polysémique et à la variété de ses usages créatifs, professionnels et cinéphiliques.
Il déroulera une fois par mois le vendredi (15h-17h) à la Maison de la Recherche de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. Les propositions sont à envoyer avant le 15/09.

This article presents an overview of the development of the US film industry from 1929 to 1999. Notwithstanding a volatile film production environment, in terms of rate of return and market share variability, the industry has remained relatively stable and profitable. Film production by the film studios is interpreted as analogous to the construction of an investment portfolio, whereby producers diversified risk across budgetary categories. In the 1930s, high-budget film production was relatively unprofitable, but the industry adjusted to the steep decline in film-going in the postwar period by refining high-budget production as the focus for profitability.

De Cocteau à Besson en passant par Franju, Kast, Carné, Rivette, Rollin, ou Ozon, les cinéastes français se sont fréquemment confrontés au genre fantastique, avec un succès public et critique toujours difficile à conquérir, jusqu'à ce que l'embellie du cinéma français de genre n'ouvre, depuis le début des années deux mille, un nouvel espace de possibles. Cet ouvrage n'entend pas contribuer à la réhabilitation d'un genre "mineur" sur le registre du fétichisme des cultures populaires. En observant la rémanence d'une veine fantastique au sein de la production sonore française ainsi que les différentes formes que choisirent les cinéastes pour s'y insérer, cette recherche a été animée par le souhait de restituer la nature des débats portant sur la légitimité sociale et artistique que suscitèrent ces incursions dans l'univers du cinéma de genre. Basé sur un corpus de près de quatre cents longs métrages, cet ouvrage observe les systèmes de croyances des collectifs institutionnels d'experts (Avance sur recettes du CNC, Commission de classification des films...) face à la genrification à l'oeuvre dans le cinéma français. Les auteurs dressent enfin un bilan de la production fantastique française en répertoriant les thèmes récurrents d'un genre hybride, incertain et instable, requérant du spectateur comme du décideur public la mobilisation de dispositifs de jugement toujours plus élaborés afin d'identifier la qualité des objets en circulation.

Le cinéma iranien, prolifique à l’intérieur du pays et reconnu à l’extérieur, fait aujourd’hui partie des productions importantes de cette industrie à l’échelle mondiale. Présent dans les festivals de renom depuis les années 1960, il produit en moyenne 80 films par an depuis le milieu des années 1980. Pour sa trente-septième édition, organisée du 30 janvier au 11 février 2019, le festival de films de Fajr, à Téhéran, événement cinématographique incontournable en Iran, a dû choisir parmi les 130 longs métrages inscrits officiellement ceux qui allaient participer à la compétition.
Sans prétendre à une quelconque exhaustivité, cet article a pour ambition de mettre au jour un historique de la distribution des films iraniens en France en traçant le chemin de ses passeurs et en mettant en lumière le réel accueil du public français vis-à-vis de ce cinéma, en s’appuyant sur quelques exemples, tout en essayant de comprendre les raisons de leur réussite ou de leur échec commercial.

This chapter focuses on drastically transforming and changing distribution ownerships of Turkish film industry since millennia. Main arguments consist, a basic projection and a comparison of the changes of the film market in the 90s when the major actors of the distribution shaped contemporary industrial dynamics, arising cinema-going habits in shopping mall film theatres, appearance, and development of the international conglomerations in the industry, rise of the local entrepreneurship, role of alternative actors excluding mainstream film distributions, market shares of actors in the industry and effects on the shaping content.

سینمای ایران، در داخل، پُربار و در خارج، نام‌آشنای جشنواره‌ها و سینمادوست‌ها، به یکی از اسامی مهم این صنعت در جهان تبدیل شده است. این سینما، از سال‌های ۱۳۴۰ راهش را به جشنواره‌های جهانی باز کرد و از دهه‌ی ۱۳۶۰ به طور متوسط ۸۰ فیلم رسمی در سال تولید می‌کند. این رقم روزبه‌روز رو به افزایش است. در سی‌وهفتمین جشنواره فیلم فجر، که از دهم تا بیست‌ودوم بهمن ۱۳۹۷ برگزار شد، ۱۳۰ فیلم بلند به‌طور رسمی برای رقابت در این جشنواره اسم‌نویسی کرده بودند.
این مقاله، بدون آنکه ادعایی بر جامع بودن فهرست فیلم‌ها داشته باشد، هدف اصلی‌اش، به‌روز کردن تاریخچه‌ای از پخش فیلم‌های ایرانی در فرانسه است؛ با نشان دادن اهمیت افرادی که در نقش رابط، تسهیل کننده‌ی این حضور شدند و نیز تلاشی است در راستای شفاف‌سازی اهمیت سینمای ایران در فرانسه، با در نظر گرفتن آنچه می‌شود به‌عنوان موفقیت و یا شکست فیلمی درگیشه تعبیر کرد.

e should note from the outset that slapstick is named not after the genre from which it originally derives but from that genre's defining prop. Although most often associated with Hollywood silent films from 1910s to the 30sin which kinesthetic geniuses like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd made careers of elegant pratfalls, cheeky brawls, and frantic chasesthe genre originated in the live performances of Italian Comedia dell'Arte, in which the original slapstick was an actual device that made a loud crack when a performer was hit. 1 A weapon of a kind that appealed to primal pleasures, it was designed to imply pain that was not actually felt. Accordingly, slapstick remains a visual strategy for simultaneously displaying and mitigating violence. The appeal of this classically lowbrow humor has persisted in popular entertainment: from these Italian roots, through the traveling vaudeville performances of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through Hollywood and, as I will explore in this article, in moviemaking late in the age of globalization. machines and their contrary tendency to foreclose freedom. 7 Although it seems to stem from Benjamin's analysis, Bataille's instrumental vision of slapstick humor dispenses with the antinomic nature of Benjamin's thought. As Miriam Hansen so carefully chronicled, Benjamin's formulation of American slapstick comedy (and of early Disney films) was part of a desperate gamble to locate in modern technology the possibility of a fate other than "the alienation of the senses that abets the deadly violence of imperialist warfare and fascism" for which this technology had already been appropriated. 8 Benjamin was indeed horrified by this capacity in modern technology, but hoped that within "the linkage of laughter and violence with the sadomasochistic slant of spectatorial pleasure" that characterized such popular forms, he might also find "alternative visions of technology and the body, prefiguring a utopian mobilization of the 'collective physis' and a different organization of the relations between humans and their environment." 9 Unlike Bataille's cruelly pragmatic collectivity, then, slapstick for Benjamin offered the utopian possibility of the reorganization of social relations outside of fascist teleology by rehearsing violence as pleasurable spectacle. Hansen points out that this was theory conceived under great duress in the late 1930s, with Adorno's disapproval making clear the extent to which Benjamin's gambit risked valorizing the very ruthless powers that had come to determine the meanings of modern technologies. Nevertheless, "by activating individually based mass-psychotic tendencies in the space of collective sensory experience and, above all, in the mode of play," Benjamin hoped that slapstick and its collective laughter "might prevent them from being acted out in reality, in the form of organized mob violence, genocidal persecution, or war." 10 Benjamin's antinomic reading of slapstick also offers a crucial understanding of the genre as it moves temporally through history into the present and spatially as it becomes a global generic form. Benjamin understood that slapstick's mitigation of violence always simultaneously preserves the violence it is meant to relieve, along with the fascist potentiality it might diminish. While funny, slapstick is also distressing, demonstrating a subject's vulnerability to harm in the same breath that it proposes to solve it. It mimics the systemic hostility that it works to undo with revolutionary reversal. According to Hansen, Benjamin believed that the "alienation of the senses that abets the deadly violence of imperialist warfare and fascism can be undone only in the realm of technology itself, by means of new media of reproduction that allow for a collective and playful (that is, nonfatal) innervation." 11 The innervation proposed here, a "mode of adaptation, assimilation, and incorporation of something external and alien to the subject," 12 contrasts with Freudian introjection. Neurophysical rather than psychological, innervation is more mechanical, allowing for an instrumental view of the kind of internalization it describes. Accordingly, comic characters, such as those that Benjamin wrote about in Molière, pose less "the inner life of man understood empirically" and more "the brilliance of a single trait, which allows no other to remain visible in its proximity." 13 In the case of slapstick, the singular comic trait, particularly in the Chaplin model that Benjamin had in mind, most always highlights a relation between violence and technology that the comic performance, in toggling between them, emphasizesboth the fact of their relation, and also the ease with which slapstick pivots in both directions, between the cruelty of machines and the release of humor.

Film was a most important product in the lives of the people during the 1930s. This paper sets out to analyse the underlying economic arrangements of the film industries of the U.S. and Britain during the decade in producing and diffusing this commodity-type to the population at large. In doing this, the paper finds a highly competitive industry that was built around showing films that audiences wanted to see, irrespective of the extent of vertical integration. It also examines the nature of the inter-relationship between the two industries and finds an asymmetry between the popularity of British films in the American market and that of American films in the British market. Our explanation for this is that the efforts of British firms on the American market were not sufficiently sustained to make a significant impact on American audiences

This volume explores and interrogates the shifts in film policies over the past thirty years. It assesses the logic that has traditionally guided policy-makers, while bringing to light the agency of film professionals. It covers film industries from all over the world, foregrounding issues relating to geographical and economic integration, political regimes and new technologies. Featuring chapters by leading and rising academics, in-depth case studies and interviews with practitioners and policy-makers, this book provides a timely overview of governments’ and
industries’ responses to the changing landscape of the production, distribution and consumption of films.

Organisée dans le cadre de la 2e édition de la Semaine des Arts et des Médias, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle –Paris 3, Amphi D02, jeudi 16 mars 2017 de 12h à14h

Cette table ronde réunira des chercheurs, des étudiants et des professionnels afin de débattre des difficiles conditions d’existence et des usages cinéphiliques propres au cinéma dit « de genre » en France. Il s’agira de questionner ce continent filmique qui demeure relégué aux marges du marché et des instances de légitimation. La situation de ce « mauvais objet » fera ainsi l’objet d’échanges concernant son économie créative, sa diffusion et sa visibilité.

En présence de Sylvain PERRET (1kult, Badlands), Alban RAVASSARD (L’Appel), Benjamin ROCHER (La Horde, Goal of the Dead, Antigang), Emmanuel ROSSI (Tanzi Distribution) et Yann VILAIN (doctorant et enseignant).

La table ronde se prolongera à 17h par une projection du film Goal of the Dead (Benjamin Rocher et Thierry Poiraud, 2014) au cinéma Studio Galande, présentée par Benjamin Rocher.

Avec le soutien de Tanzi Distribution, de Sin’Art et du Labex ICCA.

Organisation : Bastien CHAMPOUGNY, Margot DUGUÉ, Quentin MAZEL, Thomas PILLARD

In the post-Second World War period the floor fell out of the market for films in the U.S.. However, whilst the average revenue of films fell, the ‘hit’ end of the market sustained itself as consumers were drawn increasingly to particular attractions.  The growing inequality in the distribution of revenues meant that the risks associated with high budget productions could no longer be balanced against the steady earnings of medium budget films. During the 1950s the ‘majors’ all became distributor-financiers as they reduced their exposure to the risks associated with film production. In doing this they retained their dominant position in the industry.

Im internationalen Vergleich zeichnet sich die deutsche Medienwissenschaft durch ihre hohe Produktivkraft im Bereich der geschichtsphilosophischen Narrative aus. Das erfolgreichste seiner Art war in den letzten /ist seit einigen Jahre zweifellos das Techniknarrativ, das Hegel nicht nur vom Kopf auf die Füße stellt, sondern die Füße auch noch durch das Gestell der Technik ersetzt und sich mit der Formel »Vater Krieg und sein Phallus Technik liquidieren das Subjekt« zusammenfassen lässt. Für einen Neuankömmling -ich genieße das Leben eines deutschen Universitätsbeamten erst seit verhältnismäßig kurzer Zeit -liegt die Faszination solcher Narrative nicht zuletzt in ihrer raumgreifenden Ambition. Ganz im Geist solcher Ambition könnte es durchaus reizvoll sein, selbst einen Beitrag zur Inauguration eines neuen geschichtsphilosophischen Narrativs zu leisten, das seinen Ausgang von der Ökonomie nimmt und sich etwa auf eine Formel des Typs »Mutter Markt und ihr Phallus Geld liquidieren Vater Krieg und seinen Phallus Technik« bringen ließe. Reizvoll wäre das nicht zuletzt, weil sich ein solcher Kampf der Medientheorien auch mit Spielfiguren, so genannten »media theory action figures« austragen ließe. Theoriebildung könnte auf diesem Weg in Merchandising münden, was angesichts des Bedarfs an neuen Lehrmitteln für den modularisierten Unterricht auch neue Perspektiven der Drittmittelakquisition eröffnen würde.

De Taxi, Yamakasi et Wasabi à Taken et Le Transporteur, les nombreux films écrits ou co-écrits par Luc Besson occupent une place centrale au sein du catalogue d’EuropaCorp tout comme dans la gestion par la major de son image de marque et dans les vifs débats suscités en France par l’essor de ce cinéma de genre dit « à l’américaine ». Peu de travaux ont pourtant été consacrés à ce jour aux activités scénaristiques et créatives de Besson, au rôle de ces films « bessoniens » vis-à-vis de l’identité et des orientations stratégiques ou de branding de la société, ainsi qu’aux discours que la « marque de fabrique Besson » génère chez les critiques et les spectateurs/trices à une échelle locale ou plus étendue.  Cet article s’efforce précisément de combler de telles lacunes, en articulant une approche générique, stratégique et pragmatique. Après avoir rappelé les reproches adressés à la major par la presse française spécialisée, notre réflexion tente d’évaluer les politiques de production et les stratégies de marque d’EuropaCorp au prisme des réceptions dont la multiplicité des films écrits par Besson fait l’objet par des publics eux-mêmes diversifiés, à travers une étude des avis publiés par les internautes de divers pays sur les forums du site IMDb. L’étude montrera l’intérêt et les limites de cette source pour analyser l’apport de Besson à l’image d’EuropaCorp, la qualité des films écrits par le producteur, ainsi que les publics qu’ils parviennent à toucher en cultivant leur position atypique sur le marché de l’entertainment.

En France et dans la plupart des pays dotés aujourd’hui de fonds de soutien sélectifs à la production cinématographique, le principe adossant le versement de subsides publics sur des critères de qualité est unanimement reconnu comme un élément fondamental des référentiels modernes de la régulation audiovisuelle. Il n’en fut pas toujours de même, et les débats que connut, en France, l’application de la première mesure adoptée sur des critères qualitatifs en faveur de la production de films de court métrage ont le mérite de montrer que le film sur l’art fit très tôt figure de caution intellectuelle et morale, dès lors que le législateur, puis l’administration culturelle publique en charge du cinéma s’attachèrent à définir les contours d’une qualité artistique digne d’être encouragée par les pouvoirs publics. S’inscrivant dans l’héritage de l’approche foucaldienne des concepts, l’analyse cognitive de la politique cinématographique laisse une place centrale au rôle des idées et au sens que donnent les individus aux référentiels de l’action collective. Dans cette perspective, le film sur l’art est un objet heuristiquement fécond car il est hybride. Il est à la fois un objet, mais aussi un concept émergeant de la jeune politique du cinéma des années cinquante, qui se cherche encore et va s’affirmer à travers lui en en faisant le premier genre bénéficiaire de la toute nouvelle « Prime à la qualité » (1954-59).

Nollywood's economic landscape is shifting, and the historically configured structure that relied on distribution networks controlled by the local businessmen can no longer sustain the rapidly modernizing tradition. Recently, the industry has attracted corporate organizations with big economic clouts to transform it from a national phenomenon to a transnational commodity. The corporate takeover, notwithstanding, a few professional filmmakers continue to rely on old production and distribution platforms that have served them for years. Regarding this industrial reality, this study examines the current corporate trends in Nollywood vis-à-vis the production and distribution formats that Tunde Kelani adopts, and it concludes that Kelani is a dissident auteur filmmaker, who prefers an alternate, albeit, the old form of film distribution and circulation to the current corporate rush in Nollywood.

The authoress of this article seeks an answer to a question if the distinct national Spanish cinema in the 21st century still exists and can one find in it any hits –  films which gathered in the cinema audience which could be counted if not in millions than at least in hundreds of thousands.
An analysis of the European box office concerning Spanish films from the  first fifteen years of the 21st century allows the authoress to draw the following conclusions: firstly, the greatest popularity abroad have the films in which one cannot see the ‘Spanish’ features, so a transnational productions in terms of stylistics, close to films which get to movies straight from Hollywood. Secondly, those are also films which bear the features of ‘Spanishness’ but those that still exist in a mass awareness but does not necessarily have a lot in common with the reality, namely, those which the European audience got acquinted with thanks to Pedro Almódovar. Thirdly, one of the most willingly watched Spanish films in Europe are the films watched... in Spain by Spanish people, so comedies with a peculiar humour rooted in a tradition and culture of this country.

(Chapter) "This is Where we Came In": The Economics of Unruly Audiences, Their Cinemas and Tastes, From Serial Houses to Grind Houses in Austin Fisher and Johnny Walker (eds) Grindhouse: Cultural Exchange on 42nd Street, and Beyond (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), part of the Global Exploitation Cinemas series.

(from the book's introduction, '42nd Street, and Beyond'):
Phyll Smith moves the discussion on from the mythology of "grindhouse" examined by Ward to the more tangible arena of grind house historiography.  Smith's chapter, "This Is Where We Came In": The Economics of Unruly Audiences, Their Cinemas and Tastes, From Serial Houses to Grind Houses," draws on original trade papers and news stories in what is perhaps the most rigorous assessment to date of the grind house's earliest days.  Exploring the original technical uses of "grind," Smith traces the development of "grindhouse" as an industry standard term, and, through an examination of the continuities and discontinuities that existed between grind house and "serial house" theatres, Smith constructs "a new, more comprehensive and accurate etymology" of "grindhouse" than historians have been offered thus far.
(Austin Fisher and Johnny Walker)

(from Film Studies, Volume 18 (Spring 2018) pp.108-109)
Phyll Smith traces the various exhibition practices lumped together under the ‘grind’ descriptor (rolling exhibition of a handful of films; late-night and early-morning performances; double or triple-features) as industry standards as far back as the 1910s. Rather than being an anomaly which began in the 1950s, Smith
argues persuasively that ‘continuous grind is perhaps the longest standing and most
widespread model of programming throughout cinema history’ (46).
(Martin Fradley)

(from The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 2017, Chapter 20 'Media'; Oxford University Press p.410)
Perhaps the most groundbreaking chapter is Phyll Smith’s investigation into original trade papers and news archives in order to establish an authoritative account of the development of ‘grind house’ as a term. As Smith explains:
"Constructing a new, more comprehensive and accurate etymology for ‘grind’ and ‘grind house’ than the OED provides allows us to see not only the nuances of the term’s use and development but also how it was constructed in opposition to other cinematic forms. (p. 32)"
It is this kind of meticulous and detailed archival research—drawing on the tradition of the New Film History to offer a more rigorous grounding in historical context—that marks out the most significant intervention of Grindhouse. The weakest scholarship on cult and exploitation cinema has always been that which lacks methodological rigour and deploys its key terminology unthinkingly, so this kind of thorough excavation of the history of the term ‘grind house’ is to be celebrated, and points towards a more sophisticated model for cult scholarship to adopt. Moreover, not only do I think that this current collection makes a substantial intervention within the scholarly debates, but there are many chapters here that I would like to see developed into full monographs in the future.
(Iain Robert Smith)

Mettre en relation le film noir français d’après-guerre avec la France de 1946-1960 supposait de fonder notre recherche doctorale (2008-2013) sur le dépouillement et l’exploration systématique d’une grande variété de sources contextuelles et d’archives: il s’agissait de prendre en compte le « non-film » pour mieux comprendre le film, et de s’appuyer sur ce matériau pour enrichir, compléter et parfois nuancer les analyses. Cette communication tentera de déterminer l’apport des archives pour l’analyse des représentations, en présentant les trois grands types de documents d’époque consultés durant la préparation de notre thèse: les archives de production (en particulier le Fonds Crédit National de la Bifi), la presse populaire de cinéma (via des collections de magazines spécialisés à fort tirage comme Cinémonde et Ciné-Revue) et une multitude d’archives « contextuelles » (Archives Gallimard, ouvrages de la collection « Série Noire », courrier des lecteurs de Mystère Magazine, publications de la Centrale Catholique du cinéma, etc.).

Si le cinéma est représenté depuis ses origines comme un média en perdition (Creton 1997), dont le développement a pu être pensé comme une succession de crises (Sadoul 1948, Altman 1995), ce colloque entend analyser la prégnance, les reconfigurations et les usages de cette métaphore à l’heure où celle-ci tend à la fois à se déployer largement, à devenir plus labile et à se couper de son sens originel en étant désormais assimilée à une situation « normale » et « définitive » plutôt qu’exceptionnelle et temporaire (Revault d’Allonnes 2016). Dans ce contexte marqué par l’omniprésence, la généralisation ainsi que l’expansion étendue et sans fin de « la crise » dans tous les domaines (Ibid.), l’usage courant de ce terme par la profession comme les chercheur-e-s pour désigner la « zone de turbulences » que traverserait le paysage audiovisuel à l’ère numérique (Gaudreault, Marion 2013), offre l’opportunité d’interroger de façon critique le sens et la portée d’un tel concept au regard de la situation actuelle et des évolutions, bouleversements ou ruptures dont elle est ou serait porteuse.

European film production and distribution is currently regulated and shored up by a great many public policies drawn up by a range of institutions: the European Union (the supra-national level), central governments (the national level) and local governments (the sub-national level). This tripartite hierarchy creates a vertical policy axis in which the European Union plays an especially important role. Not only does the European Union fund areas in which national and local governments are traditionally weak, but it also sets out guidelines which all governments must follow when establishing policies and funds for films. But what would happen if the supra-national level suddenly vanished? Would national policies be capable of replacing European Union action in an effective and efficient way? The article answers this research question through the case study of Switzerland, which in 2014 has been excluded from the MEDIA programme (the main European initiative in the audio-visual field) after the results of a national referendum on mass immigration. The analysis of the compensatory measures introduced by the Swiss government for supporting films shows that a single State could successfully replace European initiatives only when these initiatives are not specifically inspired by the subsidiarity principle.

Cinema is a major cultural stake in France of the Fifties, even if film industry is in crisis. The number of produced films increases, but the frequency of attendance was in progressive decline from 1947 onwards until 1952 when audience figures reached their lowest since the Liberation and the public votes by plebiscite films from other countries (American and Italian in particular). The Blum-Byrnes agreements, signed in 1946, accentuated this decline. The quotas operating at the time (4 weeks per trimester for French films, and 8 weeks for American films) meant that French films aimed to make a profit very rapidly in the first week of screening so as to make way for others. French popular cinema emerged from this equation of frequentation/over-production/quotas -an equation that would push French producers toward thematic and aesthetic formulas aiming at a fast and viable placement of their products that would fill the competitive gap (with American films) and produce the desired economic results during that crucial first week of exhibition. To remedy this situation, French government pass a law in 1948 whose aim was to help re-energise the ailing French film industry, creating a public fund. With the principle of equality for the producers in mind, the redistribution of funds is based pro-rata on the box-office success of the previous film. This paper demonstrates the links between this system and the growth of popular cinema. It is particularly because of the proliferation of popular films that the critic and the film lovers mobilize themselves and obtain from the French government in 1953 the creation of new fund to support the "quality" by the way of selective criterions. The concept of quality in film is consequently defined during the Fifties more in more per report (and opposition) in commercial success of popular cinema.

This paper examines the financial strategies employed in the process of film production with particular emphasis on the performance of Warner Bros during the period from 1921 to 1940. The setting of film budgets is interpreted within a context of the financial risks involved, and in particular, a portfolio theory approach is found to provide a useful framework for describing and analyzing risk. The rapid growth of the film industry in the interwar years, together with the economic volatility of the period, produced a variety of risktaking strategies, and this paper attempts to assess the relative success of these strategies. 1998 Academic Press Film is a complex commodity. Each unit of output is unique, consisting of a set of characteristics which differentiates it from other film outputs, notably, genre, plot, screenplay, star billing, direction, cinematography, art direction, supporting actors, sets and settings, wardrobe and make-up, music, and length. Unlike live performance activities, each exhibition will be technically identical, although the size of screen and atmosphere associated with consumption will differ, and of course the technology associated with its diffusion allows an incomparably larger audience to enjoy its qualities. The monopoly of ''uniqueness'' is a property right and forms the basis for rent-seeking behavior. It also serves as a major problem for film production companies. Since box-office revenue will rest upon the reception of each film by consumers who are able to make choices between rival unique products, as well as having alternative uses for their time, production managers will be concerned about reducing the degree of potential uncertainty implicit in the property of uniqueness. They will seek to attenuate the risks

A paper given at "What Is Cinema History?", the HoMER Network Conference, 2015.

Conference co-hosted by History of Moviegoing, Exhibition and Reception Network and the Early Cinema in Scotland project
University of Glasgow, 22-24 June 2015.
Part of the To be continued… seriality network panel.
(Tuesday 23th June)

Post-doctoral fellowship on "Popular Cinema and Movie Buffs in France 1945-1958".

Long-term research (19 months) conducted at the IRCAV (Institut de Recherche sur le Cinéma et l'Audiovisuel, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3)

Program coordinator: Geneviève Sellier (PR, Université Bordeaux Montaigne)

Program abstract:

In this ANR program (2012-2014), we will explore French mainstream cinema from 1945 to 1958, and the many movie weeklies published during the period, when moviegoers reached a historical high in France. This requires a multidisciplinary framework, articulating economy, sociology, anthropology, film studies, cultural history, and more recent Anglo-American approaches such as cultural studies, gender studies and star studies. Our corpus will be composed, on the one hand, of the 20 top box-office titles for each year, and on the other hand, of the most popular fan magazines and "photo-romans" (novelizations), published on a weekly basis.
We will also consult trade papers, for material concerning production, distribution and exhibition, as well as private archives to shed light on individual film-buffs. Because none of the French popular magazines of the period have been explored in an academic perspective until now, we need first to locate collections and complete them if necessary, before cataloguing and indexing them by articles, film titles, names and themes. This index will be available to all scholars on a database. It will be a major tool for the examination of the reception of popular stars and genres, both French and foreign, in conjunction with box-office figures.
After establishing these data, we will be able to study the whole panorama of mainstream cinema in post-war France, both through overall analysis and case studies of a particular star, a given genre or category of film-buff.

Ce colloque international est consacré à l’histoire de la revue corporative Le Film français, fondée en 1944, et toujours éditée de nos jours.
Se présentant comme le guide éclairé de toutes les branches de l’industrie cinématographique, Le Film français participe aux grands débats qui traversent le cinéma français depuis la Libération (Accords Blum-Byrnes, reconstruction de l’industrie, « bataille de la qualité », etc.). À la fois témoin et acteur des multiples évolutions que connaît le cinéma en France dans l’après-guerre, il offre à ses lecteurs quantité d’informations sur la filière : données statistiques, fiches de films, tableaux de tournage, présentations corporatives, bilan des recettes d’exploitation... En quelques années, Le Film français s’impose comme le journal professionnel du cinéma français.
Dans ce colloque, seront notamment analysées l’histoire de la revue et son cadre institutionnel, l’évolution de la ligne éditoriale sur la période 1945-1958, la mise en images et la représentation des chiffres du box-office, la promotion des stars ou encore la place du Film français dans l’histoire de la presse professionnelle en France.

Organization committee:
- Clémence Allamand, PhD Candidate, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 - Laurent Creton, PR, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
- Kira Kitsopanidou, MCF, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
- Thomas Pillard, Post-doc, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3

This chapter aims to explore the relationship between France and the US during the post-war era through the prism of Le Film francais, considering this trade publication as a significant forum for transatlantic exchanges. Within this framework, it will first examine the magazine’s pro-French rhetoric, a typical feature of the Cold War climate. Nevertheless we will then see that this nationalistic « propaganda », far from betraying an isolationist attitude of withdrawal, is inseparable from a desire to intensify Franco-American cooperation, which manifested itself in various ways and served at least two goals : to facilitate the reconstruction of the French movie industry, and to favor its entry into a globalized economy.

This dissertation explores the development of genre in American cinema from its origins to 1914. Genre has long functioned as a structure of communication between artists and their audiences, organizing repetitions and variations among cultural products, but the Second Industrial Revolution, in the latter decades of the

The idéaltype of "quality" considerated as an objective reference frame of the public action in the field of the cinema goes up wellbefore the creation of a French administration of cinema. Symptomatically, it is under the direction of the Center of cinematography by Jacques Flaud (1952-59), and during lass than a decade (1953-1959) which several devices will follow one another which will durably register the question of the support for quality within the cinema public support scheme. This chapter discusses the genesis of three selective support systems introduced during this period.

[full text : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00997949]