SCREEN-L Archives

January 2011, Week 3

SCREEN-L@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Roel Vande Winkel <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:49:27 +0100
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (60 lines)
Call for Articles

 

"A Newsreel of Our Own": the culture and commerce of local filmed news

 

Special issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

 

 

Introduction

 

Film historians have thoroughly documented how newsreel series, rooted in a longer tradition of episodic filmed news reports, or 'actualities,' emerged around 1908. It was the French company Pathé that defined the main characteristics of the genre by exporting its new product to smaller foreign territories or by creating similar indigenously produced newsreels in bigger markets such as Great Britain and the United States. Competitors soon copied the concept and launched rival newsreels. Newsreel production in the United States subsequently coalesced into five major series, each associated with a major motion picture company. As the American film industry gained international prominence and supplanted its French competitors at the head of the industry, so did American newsreels. In the interwar years (1918-1939), the United States acquired a dominant share of the international newsreel market, but France and Great Britain remained key producers and distributors.

            The international history of the 'major' newsreels and their activities in free-market countries has been relatively well studied by film historians. There is also a growing corpus of literature on newsreel production and distribution in 'closed' markets that were controlled by authoritarian regimes: "No-Do" in Franco's Spain, "Luce" in Mussolini's Italy, "Die Deutsche Wochenschau" in Hitler's Germany, and several newsreels in the Soviet Union. However, there is a lack of comparative research on local producers' attempts to break the hegemony of international newsreel companies.

Many small countries without a national film industry or centralized newsreel production were worried about the creeping cultural and economic imperialism (particularly from the United States, Great Britain, and France) that foreign-made filmed news represented. Individual businessmen and organized interest groups (political parties, cultural organizations) therefore tried to create newsreels of their own, which were to 'emancipate' or 'enlighten' their own people. Most of these newsreels were produced without substantial government funding and therefore expensive, which made it easy for international companies to undersell them. In addition, local production companies typically did not have a large catalogues of feature films at their disposal, making it difficult or impossible to sell their newsreels as part of a larger distribution package. These conditions often doomed local newsreels to a short existence and has relegated them to footnotes in film history.

 

Concept

 

This thematic issue of the HJFRT will explore the history of locally-produced newsreels. The focus is on the initiatives of small companies, organizations and communities. State produced newsreels, funded or made obligatory by political regimes, will not be included. Submissions are welcomed on the commercial aspects (financing, production, and distribution) of local newsreels as well as on their structure and content. Of particular interest is the extent to which local newsreels did (or did not) model themselves after their international competitors. The substance of the newsreels is also of special interest, particularly the ways in which those newsreels tried (or not) to offer 'other' kinds of news. Also welcome are analyses on the political, social, and cultural discourses surrounding those newsreels.

 

Submitting a proposal

 

If you would like to be considered for inclusion in the issue, please send a short abstract by 4 April 2011, where you summarize your contribution. Please also include a short CV and a selected list of publications. The editors of this theme issue will get in touch with everyone before 4 May 2011 and invite some authors to submit a complete manuscript. Articles, ideally between 6000 and 8000 words (including notes and references), should be sent to the editors by 3 October 2011. Accepted and revised contributions will be due by 6 February 2012, with the issue scheduled to appear in the second half of 2012.

 

Please send your proposals to Daniel Biltereyst ([log in to unmask]), to Brett Bowles ([log in to unmask]) and to Roel Vande Winkel ([log in to unmask]).

 

Daniel Biltereyst is Professor of Film Studies at the Ghent University, where he leads the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS, www.cims.ugent.be). He has published in international journals and readers, and is the co-editor of The New Cinema History (with Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers, Blackwell, 2011).

 

Brett Bowles is Associate Professor of French Studies at the University of New York, Albany, and North American book review editor for the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. He has written widely on French and German newsreels during the Second World War, as well as the use of wartime newsreel clips in retrospective documentaries about the war.

 

Roel Vande Winkel is Assistant Professor at the University of Antwerp and at the Sint Lukas Brussels University College. He is the European book review editor for the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and the author/editor of various publications on newsreels and on film history, including Cinema and the Swastika: the International Expansion of Third Reich Cinema (with David Welch, Palgrave 2011).

----
Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu

ATOM RSS1 RSS2