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Epilogue: From Independent to ‘Specialty’ Cinema

Yannis Tzioumakis

in American Independent Cinema: An Introduction

This chapter argues that in the 2000s American independent cinema lost some of its cache. Overproduction, the move of the Hollywood studios in the independent sector and an increasing ... More

This chapter argues that in the 2000s American independent cinema lost some of its cache. Overproduction, the move of the Hollywood studios in the independent sector and an increasing institutionalisation since the l990s made American independent cinema a less prestigious and ‘important’ enterprise compared to the previous two decades. With films made outside the US enjoying noteworthy commercial success at the North American box office and with both the independent distributors and the studios’ specialty labels participating in their distribution, the chapter proposes a shift from the term independent to the less ‘charged‘ and more easily definable term ‘specialty film’ to account for these developmentsLess

Introduction

Christopher Hodges

in European Regulation of Consumer Product Safety

This Part of the book critically evaluates the various mechanisms that are adopted in the different vertical and horizontal product sectors. The objective of this part is to analyse the following ... More

This Part of the book critically evaluates the various mechanisms that are adopted in the different vertical and horizontal product sectors. The objective of this part is to analyse the following points. Firstly, to identify the purpose and nature of each technique. Secondly, to find out the situations in which each technique is used. Thirdly, to find out to whom are the obligations applied. Fourthly, to ask how effective each individual technique is in contributing to safety. The general categories of techniques that are examined here are: control of the design process; pre-marketing assessment requirements; control of the manufacturing environment and process; post-marketing requirements on producers, distributors, and the authorities; and the requirements of users. These mechanisms are ordered in this sequence to follow the chronological path in which products are designed, developed, and marketed.Less

Edmund Meisel’s “Visual Sound” in The Crimson Circle (1929): The Case of the Vanishing Part-Talkie

Fiona Ford

in The Sounds of the Silents in Britain

In August 1929, British Talking Pictures released a part-talking feature called The Crimson Circle. This early British sound feature was a re-working of the German silent film Der rote Kreis ... More

In August 1929, British Talking Pictures released a part-talking feature called The Crimson Circle. This early British sound feature was a re-working of the German silent film Der rote Kreis (directed by Friedrich Zelnik in 1928). Recorded using a sound-on-disc process, the rejuvenated Crimson Circle had dialogue sections (directed by Sinclair Hill) interspersed within a synchronised soundtrack of music and sound effects devised by the Austrian composer Edmund Meisel, notorious for his propulsive accompaniment to the German release of Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1926). Neither the print nor the discs from The Crimson Circle are known to survive, but aspects of the lost soundtrack can be glimpsed from surviving documentary evidence and by comparison with Meisel’s extant film scores and soundtracks.Less

Providing Information

Christopher Hodges

in European Regulation of Consumer Product Safety

Ensuring that consumers have sufficient and adequate information on the safety of the products that they use, so as to be able to avoid known hazards, has long been recognized as a central function ... More

Ensuring that consumers have sufficient and adequate information on the safety of the products that they use, so as to be able to avoid known hazards, has long been recognized as a central function of regulation. This text analyses that which category of people has the best opportunity to prevent particular accidents: designers, makers, distributors, or users. Research demonstrates that instructions and warnings are almost always much less effective as preventive measures than design changes. Market theory argues that information on safe use should be provided to users since the availability of information is otherwise shared asymmetrically. It is, however, the user who has to observe and apply the information given. Communication of information from producer to consumer signifies, in non-legal terms, the transfer of responsibility for risk.Less

Strutting Like a Peacock through Tiffany's 1921–1922

Michael G. Ankerich

in Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips

This chapter focuses on Mae Murray’s most prolific and successful period in her film career. With such films as The Gilded Lily, Peacock Alley, and Broadway Rose, Mae could do no wrong. She and her ... More

This chapter focuses on Mae Murray’s most prolific and successful period in her film career. With such films as The Gilded Lily, Peacock Alley, and Broadway Rose, Mae could do no wrong. She and her husband, Robert Z. Leonard, established their own film company, Tiffany, and held control over every aspect of her films: casting, editing, costuming, and photography. Following several scandals that rocked the foundations of Hollywood, including the death of starlet Virginia Rappe and the murder of director William Desmond Taylor, a new organization of self-regulation was formed, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. Murray was among the first to lash out at the new organization. Censorship, she believed, ran the risk of robbing the industry of its spontaneity.Less

Best advice

Alan Rosenthal

in The documentary diaries: Working experiences of a non-fiction filmmaker

The chapters details a series of letters exchanged between the author and his friend and Canadian distributor Gary Gladman. The letters mostly deal with Gladman’s responses to Rosenthal’s tentative ... More

The chapters details a series of letters exchanged between the author and his friend and Canadian distributor Gary Gladman. The letters mostly deal with Gladman’s responses to Rosenthal’s tentative film proposals, and why Gladman continually advocates the making of a series over the making of a one off documentary. Besides the general discussion the chapter also sets out the pros and cons of working with a professional distributor.Less

Cinema of Women: The Work of a Feminist Distributor

Julia Knight

in Doing Women's Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future

This chapter examines the role of distributors and a range of issues that come into play in getting films from their makers to their potential audiences by focusing on the work of the UK women's ... More

This chapter examines the role of distributors and a range of issues that come into play in getting films from their makers to their potential audiences by focusing on the work of the UK women's distributor Cinema of Women (COW). COW was founded in 1979 by six women—Mandy Rose, Fern Presant, Audrey Summerhill, Caroline Spry, Melanie Chail, and Maggie Sellers—who had been “shocked by the limited availability of good films made by women.” They set out to get feminist films into first-run cinemas and onto television, but they felt also that women filmmakers should be able to exercise some control over where and how their films were exhibited. This chapter considers the challenges faced by COW in trying to make their films accessible to wider audiences in the UK via theatrical release. It shows that building audiences of especially (although not exclusively) women is central to COW's distribution work. Furthermore, COW's performance and the level of service the distributor offered did not always meet filmmakers' expectations.Less

The Crop Protection Industry

Jill Lindsey Harrison

in Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice

Technological and institutional innovations have helped investors and growers to transform Californian agriculture and make it exceptionally profitable. The major concern for growers for having high ... More

Technological and institutional innovations have helped investors and growers to transform Californian agriculture and make it exceptionally profitable. The major concern for growers for having high yield had been pest control, and to control pests they embraced chemical technologies and started using pesticides. Toxic chemical pesticides are common in use for agricultural production in California and cause pesticide drift that affects humans, animals, and the environment adversely. This chapter identifies actors such as chemical manufacturers, investors, distributors, farmers, and others who play different roles in the agricultural industry and shape the pesticide drift by keeping pesticides widely available and promoting the use of pesticides for their profits. It further mentions that these actors have made some significant efforts to avert the problem of pesticide drift, but these efforts in the name of environmental sustainability are essentially circumscribed by the imperative of the industry to maximize profits.Less

A Star Is Born: Rereading the “Fatty” Arbuckle Scandal

Hilary A. Hallett

in "Go West, Young Women!": The Rise of Early Hollywood

The final chapterreinterprets the industry’s first so-called canonical sex scandal, the “Fatty” Arbuckle scandal, as an explosive round in ongoing debate about the relationship between motion ... More

The final chapterreinterprets the industry’s first so-called canonical sex scandal, the “Fatty” Arbuckle scandal, as an explosive round in ongoing debate about the relationship between motion pictures and the rise of sexual modernism. It does this by restoring Virginia Rappe—the actress who fell ill during Arbuckle’s party and died days after it—to the center of the scandal’s production, a place she occupied at the time. The dominant narrative of the scandal, which emergedquickly in the sensational press, shoehorned the event into a traditional melodrama of sexual danger, casting Rappe as a degraded, fallen woman and Hollywood as modernity’s scapegoat. This narrative aided those who sought to exert more control over the presentation of bohemian Hollywood and its girls, including censorship activists, moralists, women’s club reformers, and film producers.Less

Transacting with Private Carriage: The Gas Pipeline Regulations of 1938

in The Political Economy of Pipelines: A Century of Comparative Institutional Development

This chapter describes how the cumulative victories by groups of gas distributors resulted in the series of conditions that made possible the defining, safeguarding, and trading of property rights. ... More

This chapter describes how the cumulative victories by groups of gas distributors resulted in the series of conditions that made possible the defining, safeguarding, and trading of property rights. Gas pipeline transport transformed over the course of sixty-five years into an industry that shows true Coasian bargaining in transport entitlements and supports the world's only vigorously competitive and openly transparent gas market with an equally vigorous futures market. The Natural Gas Act of 1938 was an unusual piece of legislation that came about in response to pressure from the states and gas-consuming city coalitions. Phillips Petroleum attempted to argue that only pipeline regulation was the subject of the Natural Gas Act. The end of conflict between shippers and pipeline owners signaled a transformation of the regulator's prime job. In 2000, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) resolved the last outstanding issues, and the competitive pipeline transport market took off.Less

Moving Images: On Video Art Markets and Distribution

Lucas Hilderbrand

in Resolutions 3: Global Networks of Video

This chapter examines three models for distributing and marketing video art: (i) the gallery-based installation with art market prices; (ii) the distribution of single-channel works with ... More

This chapter examines three models for distributing and marketing video art: (i) the gallery-based installation with art market prices; (ii) the distribution of single-channel works with institutional pricing for universities, libraries, and museums; and (iii) a grassroots model premised on the free circulation of media, whether initiated by a collective spirit in production or by a logic of sharing among audiences. It argues that galleries and distributors continue to help us understand media practices in the contexts of broader art histories and even in relation to the same artists’ other works. They exist to make the work public and to help it circulate. At the same time, video sharing arises from a spirit of setting the media free, and new Web video sharing sites help works to circulate farther and faster. All three institutional models of distribution remain essential, even as the form remains ever on the move.Less

Structure

William A. Birdthistle

in Empire of the Fund: The Way We Save Now

This chapter discusses the anatomy of mutual funds. It is presented as counterintuitive—so much so that many investors are unaware there even is a structure. The chapter contrasts funds with other ... More

This chapter discusses the anatomy of mutual funds. It is presented as counterintuitive—so much so that many investors are unaware there even is a structure. The chapter contrasts funds with other offerings from financial firms, such as bank accounts or certificates of deposit. Mutual funds are, structurally and operationally, unlike both the quotidian American businesses and the omnipresent bank accounts with which we are all more familiar. They are the financial equivalent of patients in a vegetative state, kept alive only by a complex array of external machines and doctors. To understand funds, the author describes the cast of economic actors who surround and animate them: the investment adviser, fund distributor, custodian, transfer agent, and administrator.Less