Liesbeth Van de Vijver

Cinemagoing as a conditional part of everyday life: memories of cinemagoing in Ghent from the 1930s to the 1970s

This paper is part of the recent shift within the ‘New Cinema History’ from the attention for the film text to a broader consideration of the social and cultural history of cinema. In the last years, research did not only concentrate on the production and meanings of the pictures, but it also saw an increased interest in the distribution, exploitation and consumption of film. Interest for film as a consumable good has come from various disciples such as Cultural Studies, sociology, anthropology, political economy, geography and oral history. This study is based on oral accounts. Research on memories of going to the movies has contributed significantly to defining the spatial and social conditions of the cinematic experience. Yet this illuminating bottom-up approach of lived cinema cultures is mostly limited to the Anglo-Saxon experience of American films in English spoken film markets. As part of a larger research project on cinema culture in Flanders, 62 inhabitants of Ghent, Belgium, were interviewed concerning their moviegoing habits from the 1930s to the late 1970s. The oral history project aimed to analyze the significance of cinemagoing in a local community defined by class, language and a ‘pillarized’ society. The main research question in this paper is how particular was going to the movies in a local film market not overwhelmingly defined by American distributors or Hollywood movies and what were the sociocultural mechanisms behind moviegoing. In doing so we look at the entwinement of the experienced everyday life with the memories of choosing a movie theatre, remembering a movie and recollections of choosing cinema as leisure. Memory reclamation of local moviegoing as non-textual empirical research can define a parallel media history of cinema culture in Ghent and supplement the international research on cinemagoing experiences.

Crisis at the capitole: a cultural economics analysis of a major first-run cinema in Ghent, 1953-1971

This article examines local film culture based on an analysis of actual attendance and revenue figures from the major first-run cinema of Ghent, the Capitole, between 1953 and 1971. Using unique archival material captured in a database containing information on 801 films, this cultural economic analysis explores issues like financial policy, programming strategies and taste patterns in a pivotal period of crisis in the film market. A first analysis describes the programming strategies of cinema Capitole based on preferences in genre of the films, their country of origin and year of production. A second analysis studies the popularity of these programmed films based on reruns and finally, a financial analysis of the data on the ticket prices, gross revenues, taxes, admission numbers and net income characterizes this cinema in times of crisis.

Film en het moderne leven in Limburg

ceased to require current affairs programmes to be transmitted in prime time, the World in Action series was pushed off the schedules by Granada, which had by then changed from a family firm into a conglomerate of various disparate businesses. The authors of this study conclude that ITV public service programming in general, and Granada’s World in Action in particular, was the victim of political, economic and statutory changes imposed upon broadcasting rather than the architect of its own withdrawal from a public service policy (p. 122). The ultimate demise of the programme came on 7 December 1998, when its final episode entitled ‘Britain on the Booze’ was transmitted. The last chapter analyses in detail the interventions of the television regulators, ITA and IBA. There were frequent confrontations between programme makers—World in Action producers, supported by Granada executives— and censoring bureaucrats over fairness, impartiality and the balance of programmes. As the researchers highlight, these requirements, which were never precisely defined in the charters and broadcasting Acts nor given in regulators’ guidelines, often seemed to be ‘nick picking,’ often demanding that programmes should be ‘more partial’ rather then impartial, especially when dealing with Northern Irish issues. During the whole run of the series five programmes were banned. These dealt with wasteful defence budgets, terrorism, the Official Secret Act and bribery and corruption in high places. However, Fitzwalter never relented and always maintained that ‘the arguments for cutting, banning or delaying presented at the time did not stand the test of history’ (p. 209). The authors of this new study bring to the fore the variety of complex relationships between programme makers, executives, legislators, regulators, schedulers, and also politicians, audiences and market forces. The tone and manner of negotiations between various forces and the outcomes reached are the details that prove most revealing and graphically illustrate the way in which World in Action developed. Overall, this book provides a comprehensive, well structured and informative account of the World in Action series, devoid of the usual media studies jargon. It provides original analysis of the development of current affairs, or documentary journalism, as the authors prefer to call it, within regulated public service television. At the same time, it is a valuable addition to the growing number of works that chart the history of British television.

Going to the exclusive show: Exhibition strategies and moviegoing memories of Disney’s animated feature films in Ghent (1937–1982)

This is a case study of the exploitation and experience of Disney’s animated feature films from the 1930s to the 1980s in Ghent (Belgium). It is a historical study of programming practices and fina...

The Phoenix Picturehouse: 100 years of Oxford cinema memories

embark on a journey into the unfamiliar but fascinating Central Asia cinema, this book serves as a friendly guidebook. The book also includes an impressive reference section, which contains biographical and filmographical entries of key figures that shaped Central Asian cinema. However, and again, precisely because the book is an introduction that juggles with film histories of five republics spanning over seven decades in 16 chapters looking at different periods, themes and aspects, scholars, who are already familiar with the field, may feel that depth is compromised for breadth.