Search Results

Chapter Three charts Vitagraph's ascendency in becoming the world's leader in motion picture production, during which time the company earned one million dollars in annual net profit. This was derived exclusively from foreign earnings due to the mismanagement of the Patents Company's domestic distribution arm. Part of Vitagraph's popularity is attributed to the crediting and promotion of its actors via the creation of the first trade and fan magazines devoted exclusively to the movies. There are in-depth profiles of such leading players "Vitagraph Girl" Florence Turner, matinee idol Maurice Costello, and comedian John Bunny, who was widely regarded as the most recognizable man in the world. The significance of Vitagraph's Los Angeles studio in the production of popular Westerns is considered. The chapter also includes an analysis of the company's development of a sophisticated cinematography aesthetic to complement particular narratives, an approach that later came to be labeled "film noir".

This chapter discusses the international scope and status of early cinema, and the particular significance of European production companies. While Europe dominated world film markets in the first decade of the twentieth century, the situation began to change as the business organisation of the American film industry was streamlined, and the Hollywood studio system developed. In the emerging history of Hollywood, the established powers of the Motion Picture Patents Company positioned themselves against a growing lobby of independent producers, distributors, and exhibitors in a fight for market control. It was from this struggle that the industrial and aesthetic dominance of the American studio system would emerge and come to assert itself in national and international terms. The chapter also includes the study, ‘The Perils of Pathé, or the Americanization of Early American Cinema’ by Richard Abel, which examines the means by which cinema became a contested site of Americanization.

This chapter presents the stories of animators in South Korea (hereafter Korea), who experience the negotiation process of globalization both in their work and daily lives and feel them deeply. For the past 40 years or more, the Korean animation industry has widely been known as a subcontractor for foreign production companies, mainly in the United States and Japan. However, today's Korean animation industry is experiencing a cultural transition driven by the logic of global capital. In response, the industry as a whole is trying to throw off the shackles of being a subcontractor and is aiming for creative agency. This has also caused various changes in the Korean public's perception of animation. Findings show that, in this cultural transition, due to Korea's particular historical and cultural circumstances, the Korean animators are encountering contradictory situations that are leading them into numerous negotiations between the values of the global and the national.

The book concludes with an assessment of the different approaches taken to the production of regional television drama by Granada and BBC English Regions Drama in the period under consideration. It is argued that while the representation of regional culture and identity was an important part of Granada’s television production from 1956-82, providing representations of the region for both local and national audiences, this was only one part of the company’s remit within a federal, commercial broadcasting network. BBC English Regions Drama, on the other hand, was established in the 1970s specifically to produce ‘regional’ television drama for the BBC network, although the conceptualisation and realisation of ‘regional’ drama in the department’s work varied considerably within this remit. The second half of the conclusion considers the decline of regional broadcasting since the early 1980s, assessing the impact of the 1990 Broadcasting Act, the consolidation of the ITV network, the emergence of independent production companies which have, to some extent, revitalised regional drama, the preference among regional audiences for local representations, the BBC’s outsourcing of its drama production to regional production centres in Cardiff and Salford, and the new possibilities for regional drama afforded by digital television and the internet.

The capital of Egypt, Cairo, is often called “The Hollywood on the Nile” because of the numerous films produced in the country. The types of film they produced and their production structure have led to comparison with Hollywood, yet this brought fame not only to film stars and starlets but also to their dialect spoken in Cairo. Egypt is the only Arab country that was able to establish a local film industry even before national independence. After the Second World War, the economy of Egypt began to upswing, and due to the destruction of Europe in the war. Then the film industry began to boom, production companies grew and the number of films produced also rose. Furthermore, one of the filmmakers who took advantage of this situation was Ateyyat El Abnoudy, who is known as one of the best female documentary filmmakers in Egypt.

This chapter explains the strategic significance of Hong Kong to the Asia Foundation (TAF), which was attributed to its geographical, political, and economic weight among overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. It mentions Robert Blum, who understood the importance of Hong Kong as the primary center in Asia for the production of Chinese media in the Mandarin language. It also talks about the film industry in Hong Kong that had been believed to be heavily dominated by communist producers as it had been subsidized by Chinese communist capital. The chapter identifies film production companies, such as Great Wall Pictures, The Phoenix Studio, and Dragon Horse, that had been markedly successful in local markets since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. It discusses how Great Wall Pictures was cofounded by Zhang Shankun, who is known as the king of Chinese cinema in wartime Shanghai.