Bronwyn Coate

Taking care of people and communities: Rebuilding livelihoods through NGOs and the informal economy in Southern Thailand

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of NGOs in facilitating economic recovery to the tsunami devastated regions in Southern Thailand. This includes large international NGOs as well as small community based or local NGOs and how these organizations engage with one another as well as with government authorities and of course the local community to aid recovery. In particular, focus will be on how NGOs are able to assist local residents, especially those engaged in the informal sector in rebuilding their livelihoods in a region that has been devastated by a natural disaster.Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken in the paper has concentrated on analysing the response of various NGOs as well as industry representatives and government authorities in considering how response efforts and recovery initiatives have impacted, and will continue to impact on the lives and livelihoods of those living in affected communities as rebuilding takes place.Findings – Given that in Thailand ju...

Australian films at large: expanding the evidence about Australian cinema performance

International markets have in recent years become a critical component of the business model for Hollywood cinema, opening up a renewed interest in the global dimensions of film diffusion. Smaller film-producing nations such as Denmark have similarly emphasised global distribution as a key component of the industrys success. Typically, however, claims for Australian film industry success rely almost exclusively on a films domestic box office performance. This paper considers the possibilities for an expanded approach to measuring success and failure in the Australian film industry. Adopting analytic methods from cinema studies, cultural economics and geo-spatial sciences, this paper will examine the international theatrical circulation of Australian films using a unique global database of cinema showtimes. This data set captures all formal film screenings in 47 countries over an 18-month period ending 1 June 2014 and enables detailed empirical study of the locations visited by Australian-produced films. In conjunction with relevant box office data and contextual critical commentary, we propose a revised and expanded ‘film impact rating’ for assessing the reported performance of Australian films.

Feature Film Diversity on Australian Cinema Screens: Implications for Cultural Diversity Studies Using Big Data

Like in much of the world, cinema screens in Australia are dominated by feature films from the US. Drawing on the Kinomatics Global Showtime Dataset, a big cultural dataset of cinema screenings, this chapter considers the diversity of films screened in Australian cinemas by examining not only the broad range of film titles on offer, but also what titles cinemagoers have practical access to, represented by films’ screen-shares. Results of this analysis reveal that despite substantial growth in the volume of first-release feature films on Australian cinema screens, for most cinema audiences, this has not translated into an increase in the diversity of films viewed, since the onus for the provision of diversity rests with smaller cinemas that do not belong to major chains.

The Cinema Cities Index: comparing urban cinema cultures around the world

[Cinema culture varies markedly around the globe and between cities. While this is obvious, the drivers of cinema culture are complex and interact in different ways across different locations and often give rise to a distinct character of localised cinema. This can be witnessed at different scales: across countries, between cities and, on a more granular level, based on localised neighbourhoods. In this article, we apply quantitative methods to investigate cities’ ability to support cinema-going, or what we term ‘cinemability’. We focus on four inter-related aspects that we argue contribute to a city’s cinemability. These include the physical infrastructure of cinemas, the number and variety of films available, the presence of film festivals as a form of cultural signalling and the average cost of cinema admissions. In this article, we construct a ranked index of ‘cinemability’ based on data sourced from the Kinomatics Screen Dataset in order to facilitate a global comparison of contemporary cinema-going across 311 world cities. Our Cinema Cities Index is then compared with public contributions on the Cinema Cities website, http://www.cinemacities.com, where users can generate their own version of the index by assigning weights to the different variables based on their personal preferences. The results of our analysis reveal that the public place emphasis on factors such as the diversity of films offered and the affordability of cinema admission as key contributors to what makes a particular city amendable to ‘cinemability’.

Understanding the dynamics between the United States and Australian film markets: testing the ‘10% rule’

ABSTRACT Australia has historically been an important market for American media exports. As far as film trade relations between the two countries go, there is an anecdotal perception that distributors follow a ‘10% rule’ to predict the popularity of Hollywood titles in Australia, expecting American films to earn around one-tenth of their domestic box office receipts when screened downunder. Nonetheless, as prevalent as this ‘rule’ has been in the industry, it has not been seriously tested. This article addresses the gap in both scholarship and business practices and uses the ‘10% rule’ as a starting point to discuss various facets of the relationship between the two markets. We measure the popularity of American films among Australian audiences as well as contrast the differences that emerge in terms of distribution and exhibition in these markets. The article compares box office revenues, screening counts, life length in theatres and release delay in both markets. In addition, we examine how Australian exhibitors and audiences differ from the US in terms of preference towards genre, distribution company and production origin. The discussion is informed by a large dataset of global film screenings from the Kinomatics Project in conjunction with box office data compiled by Rentrak. We find no support for the ‘10% rule’ but strong evidence that audience tastes as well as distribution and exhibition practices differ across regions.