The Film Industry and Its Critical Reflections in Biographical Dramas

Similar to many creative (and other) industries, the film and television industries have for long been permeated by male norms, and by the male worker as the norm. In this context, women workers have always been considered "oddities" – unless they have acted in front of the camera. To a large extent, women have been (and still are) image (Fischer, 1976; Mulvey, 1975). Women's work behind the camera have been counteracted, not least through efforts to exclude them from positions characterized as "creative" or "above-the-line" such as director, producer, and script writer. Further, women have been met with pervading difficulties in allocating finances for their projects and with circumscribed possibilities to have their work screened in the cinema. And although (a few) women are key through their function as "image," films with a woman protagonist are usually provided with a lesser budget than films with a male lead, and women actors get distinctly less paid than their male counterparts (SFI, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2017/08/22/full-list-the-worlds-highest-paid-actors-and-actresses-2017/?sh=2e1c961f3751). Let us give an example of the former: in the Swedish film industry, recently hailed worldwide of being one of the most gender equal screening industries, feature films made between 2013 and 2016 differed in terms of budget depending on the whether the protagonist in a film was male or female. Films with a male lead had on average a 33% higher budget than films with a woman lead. In that same period, women feature film directors had on average a budget ranging between 66% and 86% of the budget of films with a man as director (SFI, 2018). The report published in 2018, by the Swedish Film Institute, concluded that: "[films with women in] key functions generally have overall lower budgets than men" (SFI, 2018, p. 17). Following the international impact that the #Metoo-movement has had and still has, and the recent demands for a 50/50 dispersion between men and women on above-the-line positions in the film industry, gender issues have advanced to the forefront in discussions dealing with the working situation in the film and screen industries. These discussions have appeared in various national contexts in print and social media, as well as in academic work (see, e.g., Jansson et al., 2020; Liddy, 2020; Marghitu, 2018; Meziani & Cabantous, 2020; O'Brien, 2019). It has become obvious that gender inequality pervades all screen industries, large and small, and that women screen workers in different national screen contexts share similar experiences. As film and television production is becoming more and more globalized, with single productions often being the outcome a variety of regional and national industries, finances and competences, working and gendered experiences of being in the industry are also becoming increasingly globalized. Still, there are regional and local differences in how women screen workers experience their work and career situation and these need to be addressed. There are also various aspects of screen work that remain to be tended to academically. Hence, this special section offers a sample of national and local studies that all investigate how gender and equality work is done in four different contexts. It is our hope that this small sample may inspire not only more studies of national contexts, but also inspire to future cross-national studies. Before discussing how various academic fields have engaged with the screening industries in terms of work experience and representation, we wish to point out that film and television, as two available media formats reaching large and heterogeneous audiences, constitute two of the most central expressions of our time, and that both contribute to reflect and mold our understanding of society, of others – and of ourselves (de Lauretis, 1987; Dyer, 1993). Questions about who is allowed to make film and TV and what messages and images are presented and conveyed are thus politically important and imperative. The long-standing male dominance in the industry, together with the realization that images do matter, has sparked an interest in studying gender in the screen industries. The gender conditions in the film industry have attracted scholarly attention across the variety of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, and this special section is a vivid example of this cross-disciplinary scholarship. Three specific, but interrelated fields stand out when it comes to the study of gendered work and inequalities in these industries: production studies, management and life work studies, and studies of women's presence and conditions in screen work. In management studies and work life research, the early 2000s saw an increased interest in focusing and exploring the working conditions in the screening industries, alongside the growing interest for working experiences in what often referred to as the creative industries (see, e.g., Blair, 2001; Delmestri et al., 2005; Ebbers & Wijnberg, 2009; French, 2020; Jones & Pringle, 2015; Meziani & Cabantous, 2020; Soila-Wadman, 2003; Sörensen & Villadsen, 2014). This strand has also included a certain focus on how film can be used as a tool for instruction on how to exert leadership (see, e.g., Bell & Sinclair, 2016). Parallel to this development is the emergence of production studies, emanating from film and television studies. This field explores film and media as cultural practices of media production, and it does so from a variety of perspectives and with various methods. Of particular pertinence here is the sub-field of feminist production studies. This field engages in studying how "routines and rituals […], the economic and political forces […] shape roles, technologies, and the distribution of resources according to cultural and demographic differences" (Mayer et al., 2009, p. 4) in order to understand how "power operates locally through media production to reproduce social hierarchies and inequalities at the level of daily interaction" (Mayer, 2009, p. 15). One of the field's most important contributions here is the critique of the "auteurist" view that films are the "voice" of one single artist, most often the director. Instead, they argue that films are the result of collective work. Departing from this insight, production studies scholars have noted the importance of studying the work that is carried out in the margins, to question the differentiation between "creative" and "craft" professions in film making, and to pay attention to the work done "below-the-line" by workers in the film industry who are seldom credited, but without whose work films would not be produced (see, e.g., Banks, 2009, 2018; Banks et al., 2016; Mayer, 2009, 2011; Mayer et al., 2009). Alongside these two areas of research, there is a third, and more recent, strand that is dedicated to studying women's presence, analyzing policy measures targeting gender (in)equality along with studying impediments to gender equality in the film industry and women's conditions in a male dominated screening industry. This strand of research comes out of feminist media studies as a rather broad field, encompassing both the humanities and the social sciences. While research in both management studies and productions studies constitute important foundations for any research conducted on gender and screen work, for this special section, it is this third strand that is of most relevance, taken that it embraces and explores both local and the global aspects of women's conditions in the male dominated screening industries. Let us therefore shortly present this strand a bit more – and the issues it has raised – in order to give a contextualization of this special section and its four articles. Studies of women's presence in the film industry have mapped the number of women behind the camera, sometimes also including an intersectional analysis and identified gendered budget-gaps and other impediments to gender equality (Cobb, 2020; Lauzen, 2019; Liddy, 2020; Smith et al., 2013). Much of this research is conducted in the United States, discussing the conditions in a film industry that is exclusively driven by private, and most often commercial, stakeholders. In other commercially focused film centers such as Bollywood in India and Nollywood in Nigeria, women behind the screen are reported to be few and the representation of women on screen stereotypical (Mukherjee, 2018; Prakash, 2020; Ukata, 2020). In other contexts, such as Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, where there is public support for film production, gender equality is often proclaimed to be a goal. For instance, the Council of Europe (2017) declared its dedication to gender equality in film production in the so-called Sarajevo-declaration, and according to a mapping carried out by the European Audiovisual Observatory in 2019, 15 EU countries have introduced gender equality measures (EAO, 2019, p. 16). In a recent anthology collecting evidence from a number of countries, media scholar Susan Liddy concludes that while demands for gender equality has been voiced by women in all contexts, public funding institutions range from those being "gender blind… to those who theoretically commit to equality but prevaricate on the best measures to implement change to others who have introduced formal gender policies and intervention strategies" (Liddy, 2020, p. 2). Scholars have pointed to several problems with gender equality policies and reforms in the film sector: they are often vague and without a plan for implementation (Thorsen, 2020), they only reach those who are involved in projects actually funded by public means (Cobb & Williams, 2020), and they lack intersectional intention and reach (Cobb & Williams, 2020; Thorsen, 2020). Further, when reforms are implemented, problems arise because making films include a range of different stakeholders and parties, which are out of reach of government policies (Jansson, 2016), and because the film industry is entrenched with institutionalized norms and values that is difficult to change and which tend to reduce the effects of policies (Jansson, 2017; Jansson & Wallenberg, 2020). Scholars investigating women's conditions in the film industry have for a long time indicated that the way the industry is organized both formally and informally benefits white men. The sexual division of labor in the organization is manifested in women being found on positions such as script supervisors, costume designers, and make-up artists, as well as in various below-the-line positions. Many below-the-line professions are dominated by men, and the female dominated positions such as the ones mentioned above, tend to have lower status (Banks, 2009). Scholars have also noted differences in status among above-the-line professions. For instance, while male directors and scriptwriters are considered to be able to "carry" a movie, women directors and scriptwriters are not considered to do so (Bielby & Bielby, 1996, Eikhof and Cole in this issue). The trope of the male genius has been discussed as a hindrance to gender equality in several studies (see, e.g., Lantz, 2007; Marghitu, 2018; Regev, 2016; Schatz, 1988; and by Jansson et al. in this special section). Studies have also looked into how other features of the way the film industry is organized affects gender and concluded that the outcome of networking differs substantially to the favor of men (Grugulis & Stoyanova, 2012). Moreover, mothering duties limits women's possibilities in an industry where long days and extremely intense periods of work away from home are considered to be the normal procedure (Liddy, 2017; Liddy & O'Brien, 2021; O'Brien, 2015, 2019; Wing-Fai et al., 2015; Wreyford, 2013). Considering all these past (and recent) studies, there is no doubt that the screening industries – as production sites and as workplaces – are of definite interest to scholars within different disciplines. This special section aims at addressing some of the issues that recent scholarship has touched upon and tried to tackle, and it does so from four different national and cultural contexts. At the center of all four articles included in the section is the analysis of women's conditions in the screening industries, including their experiences of working and trying to get by – and of how these industries continue to foster the notion of women film workers as "oddities" in an industry that continues to uphold the idea of the genius as male. Let us now turn to the four articles included in this special section. In our first article, "The price of motherhood in the Irish film and television industries," media scholars Susan Liddy and Anne O'Brien discuss the continuous problems that surround motherhood and screen work, finding in their material evidence that there is a systemic bias against mothers, not only as women, but also as women and mothers, and that mothers have internalized the marginalization that comes from their maternal status. They have also found that many mothers adapted ways that would help them to sustain their working lives, but they were rarely supported in those adaptations by the screen production industry. In "'Almost a European, but not quite': Experiences of Female Employees in the Lithuanian Film Industry from the Postcolonial Point of View," authors Lina Kaminskaite and Jelena Salaj discuss how the women filmmakers experience their conditions in a film industry that is still marked by the transformation of Lithuania from being part of the Soviet union to becoming a country which is a member of the EU. They argue that the Lithuanian film industry is characterized by being in a postcolonial state. While the opening up of Lithuania has meant new possibilities for women film workers, it has also presented difficulties and the negotiation of new identities and new mode of film production. Doris Ruth Eikhof and Amanda Cole focus on how women are considered a risk in film production and how this leads to precarious conditions for women in the industry. In their article named, "On the basis of risk: Screen directors and gender inequality," they use the intersectional risk theory to understand how gender inequality is related to risk management practices in the screen industry. Studying two specific gender equality initiatives in the Canadian film industry, they show how risk management is gendered, and they argue that risk plays an important part in decision making in the industry. By understanding how risk is gendered, they argue, it is possible to change the processes that decides how risk is understood. The last article included in this special section departs from the much-debated aspect of film production, namely the final saying over a film's final format. In "The Final Cut," authors Maria Jansson, Frantzeska Papadopoulou, Ingrid Stigsdotter, and Louise Wallenberg discuss how the relationship between film director and producer serve to reproduce gendered relations that position the male creator and producer as norm – even in contexts where both director and producer are women. Departing from a series of interviews made with mostly women working in these two professions, the authors show how these two above-the-line professions are still governed by the malestream and that they tend to be constructed in relation to masculinity. Clearly, even in a country like Sweden, often hailed for its equality work, the gender equality measures that are undertaken are not sufficient to come to grips with gender inequalities and the male norm. Taken together the four articles shed light on different aspects of the film industry. The evidence provided from the different countries indicate that there are many similarities in the challenges that women in the film industry face. However, there are also differences depending on context. The article about Lithuania shows the importance of situating the film industry in a historical and political context. O'Brian and Liddy show in their article, the importance of understanding the specific context of how child care and the welfare state play out in order to capture women's conditions in film and television work. Eikhof and Cole's article demonstrates the necessity of applying an intersectional approach in order to also see differences in conditions between women, even if they work in the same industry and the same country. The article on Sweden, finally, looks deeper into how specific gender equality policies targeting the film industry plays out, and what problems remain, after having been implemented for almost 20 years. We believe that this special section is one step toward a deeper understanding of how gender shapes the working conditions in the film industry, and hope that it will inspire further research that takes a wider, more inclusive and possibly also more comparative grip on women screen worker's experiences and work conditions. This work was supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond under Grant no. P17-0079:1. No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors. The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and/or its supplementary materials.

Piracy is the single greatest threat to copyright owners in the US and globally, and China stands at the heart of the international piracy epidemic, producing nearly two-thirds of the goods on the $512 billion worldwide counterfeit market. Chinese piracy costs the US music and film industries billions of dollars in losses each year, and the Chinese domestic music and film industries have been decimated at the hands of pirates. Any solution to the international piracy problem must begin with a solution to the problem in China. However, the road to such a solution has become far more difficult with the rapid growth of the Internet in China, and consequently, the rapid growth of Internet piracy there. This paper contemplates what the future holds for the protection of audiovisual works in China. It is meant to provide cultural and historical context to the copyright piracy epidemic in China, and, with that context in mind, realistically assess three policy directions from which the Chinese government might choose going forward as it seeks to defeat piracy in the Internet age and develop vibrant domestic music and film industries. The three policy directions examined are: (1) cracking down on piracy; (2) staying the present course; and (3) establishing an online alternative compensation system that would allow users to download unlimited music and movies from the Internet while ensuring copyright owners are fairly compensated for their works. I argue that the third option could provide the optimal balance between the objectives of Chinese consumers (more entertainment at a lower price), copyright owners (fair compensation), and the Chinese government (cultural enrichment and reduction of Internet and physical piracy). Information used in this paper was obtained from numerous interviews I conducted in Shanghai and Beijing during December 2004 and January 2005. All of those interviewed are connected with copyright in China, either in the administrative, legal, or entertainment fields. Interviewees included government officials, intellectual property lawyers, an appellate court judge specializing in intellectual property cases, law professors, music producers, a television producer, a publicist, an agent, songwriters, and music industry executives.

In December 1916, as Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company was crossing the United States to make its West Coast premiere in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Musical Bureau attempted to generate additional publicity and sustain excitement by publishing the first (and only) issue of the Diaghilef Ballet Russe Courier. Squarely in the center of the front page, under the headline “Ballet Too Expensive for Filming,” was a letter from American film director and producer Thomas H. Ince, purportedly responding to impresario and publicist Robert Grau's recommendation that Ince invite the ballet troupe to make a film: Dear Mr. Grau, I have read your communication in regard to the Russian Ballet. I fail to see the practicability of the idea of making a picture of the Russian Ballet, wonderful and unprecedented as the success of this notable organization has been. You understand, of course, that it would necessitate bringing the entire organization to Los Angeles, and any aggregation of dancers that can play to $100,000 dollars in two weeks would most assuredly demand all the money that I have, my right eye and left hand in addition to any hopes that I may have for a future life, in return for their service. Very truly yours, Thomas H. Ince.1Thomas Ince was not the only one skeptical of a Ballets Russes film project. The company's impresario, eager to position his company within the realm of high art, actively shunned mass culture and popular entertainment, including the still-young filmic medium: no Ballets Russes production was ever filmed.2 Despite this, there were numerous encounters between the Ballets Russes and the burgeoning Hollywood film industry during and immediately after the company's American tours in 1916 and 1917. Tales of these encounters paint a picture of the reciprocal fascination and mutual attraction of Diaghilev's troupe and the American film industry, and the spheres of stage and screen more broadly. A few of these connections have been examined: film scholar Gaylyn Studlar, for example, has discussed the influence of the Ballets Russes on the mise-en-scène of The Thief of Baghdad (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1924), particularly the extent to which the film's star, Douglas Fairbanks, was inspired by Vaslav Nijinsky's choreography and stylized movements.3 Scholars have also explored cases in which Ballets Russes dancers went on to choreograph dance numbers for American films, such as Adolph Bolm's work with director Dudley Murphy on Danse Macabre (1922) and Theodore Kosloff's collaborations with director Cecil DeMille on nearly thirty Hollywood productions following his time with the Ballets Russes.4 Relatedly, Lynn Garafola has cited such “crossovers and parallels” between film and the Ballets Russes, though she has focused primarily on the relationship between European avant-garde and experimental film strategies and the company's aesthetics.5 However, the Ballets Russes's sustained influence on silent film culture in the United States—its production, narratives, aesthetics, and exhibition—as well the extent to which Hollywood crafted and offered American audiences its own vision of the Ballets Russes and its dancers long after the company departed, remains largely unexamined. This omission is hardly surprising: not only have many of the silent films (and silent film scores) that may most clearly demonstrate these connections been lost, but crucial information about the production and exhibition contexts in which these relationships were most visible are scattered and incomplete as well. Finally, the West Coast leg of the Ballets Russes's second US tour, which brought the company into the orbit of the burgeoning American film industry, is rarely discussed.In this article, I examine this mutual attraction between the Ballets Russes and cinema, beginning with the company's arrival in Los Angeles for a week of performances in late December 1916, during which Hollywood elite attended performances that received rave reviews and company members, in turn, were treated to behind-the-scenes visits to the town's film studios. With this expanded vision of the troupe's activities and reception in mind, I examine two types of cinematic “appearances” that Diaghilev's dancers made in the years immediately following the company's US tours: first, the performances by company members and invocations of company repertoire and aesthetics in the live stage acts so often integrated into film presentations in the silent era and, second, the incorporation of Ballets Russes dancers, repertoire, and aesthetics, as well as the Ballets Russes as a broader signifier, into a number of feature-length films. In the former performances, I argue, the visual and narrative themes, music, and choreographies associated with the company were reprised on cinema stages, most often under the direction of the company's male dancers. The latter performances offered a more fanciful and imaginative vision of the company onscreen, frequently deploying either female Ballets Russes dancers or fictional modern Russian ballerina characters as visual—and highly visible—icons of the Ballets Russes and American mythologies of Russian culture and politics more broadly. Both types of cinematic (re)appearance, I argue, introduced new audiences to the company's choreographic, musical, and visual aesthetics, allowing these aesthetics to circulate and the company's influence to grow long after its departure. These performances also benefited the film industry, enabling filmmakers, studios, and exhibitors alike to associate themselves with the company's cultural capital, its status as high art, and the aura of mystique and intrigue that surrounded it.Scholars such as Hanna Järvinen have recently challenged standard narratives about why the Ballets Russes failed “to conquer America.”6 Yet the Ballets Russes spawned a fleet of reprises, tributes, and references on cinema stages and screens throughout the country. These cinematic performances generated their own advertisements, programs, and reviews that gestured toward the Ballets Russes and simultaneously invited an ever-expanding segment of the American public to engage with and find their own meanings in both these cinematic “texts” and the Ballets Russes performances and mythologies that they referenced.7 Perhaps this is not a conquest. But this complex, layered, and multivalent intermedial web, I believe, is evidence of the company's significant influence on art and entertainment in the United States, as well as its lasting resonance within American culture.Bypassed during the Ballets Russes's first US tour, Los Angeles audiences and critics were on pins and needles waiting for their first glimpse of the company in the fall of 1916. “Dancers Are Coming!” declared a Los Angeles Times headline, announcing that the company was set to arrive on Christmas day for a weeklong engagement at Clune's Auditorium.8 Over the next several weeks, audiences in Los Angeles were bombarded with glowing previews hyping premier danseur Vaslav Nijinsky; Schéhérazade and other signature ballets; the seventy-piece orchestra traveling with the troupe; and the “wild opulence” of the company's scenery and costumes.9 By the time the Ballets Russes arrived via train—six baggage cars of equipment, three coaches and a dining car for the performers, plus a private car for Nijinsky and an extra baggage car decked for the company's Christmas Eve party, the Los Angeles Examiner reported—the press was near fever pitch. Los Angeles residents were equally excited. The company's premiere, which featured Nijinsky's new ballet Till Eulenspiegel and the dances from Prince Igor, was completely sold out and began late due to the large crowd, which included film industry elite and familiar faces from the screen. As newspapers gleefully reported, the delay was compounded when the dancers, on hearing that Charlie Chaplin was in attendance, demanded that he be brought backstage. One critic explained, “[They] had all heard of him and seen him . . . so that Nijinsky, Revalles, Lopokova, all of them, kowtowed to him, and I shouldn't be surprised if someone kissed him; . . . foreigners do that when greatly enthused.”10That Chaplin and others working in early film would have been eager to see the Ballets Russes is hardly surprising. Those in the film industry had looked to the dance world for inspiration and personnel since its advent, yielding early moving picture experiments such as Thomas Edison's Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895) and silent feature films like director Lois Weber's The Dumb Girl of Portici, starring Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (Universal, 1915). For early filmmakers, dance was understood as a means of displaying—and a model for exploring—film's capacity to represent movement, as well as a strategy for creating rhythm, pace, and mood onscreen. Many directors, such as D. W. Griffith, also believed that dance training cultivated an attention to physical presence and a slower, more musical movement style that worked far better on screen than that quicker, larger gestures that many theater actors brought to film studios.11 As a result, a number of dance schools and companies in and around Los Angeles—perhaps most notably Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn's Denishawn, but also former Ballets Russes dancers Theodore Kosloff and Alexandra Maria Baldina's ballet school and British dancer Ernest Belcher's Celeste School—quickly became affiliated with the film industry, training film actors and actresses to move on camera and providing a steady supply of dancers for film productions.12 That the principles of movement and gesture established by François Delsarte are as visible in the aesthetics of silent film as they are in the aesthetics of modern dance, as scholar Carrie Preston has demonstrated, is hardly a coincidence.13Reviews of the Ballets Russes's Los Angeles performances were strikingly enthusiastic, praising the company's vigor, speed, and variety. As Los Angeles critic Edwin Schallert wrote, “Daring to the last degree in its big conceptions, startling throughout in its massing of color, and breathtaking in the swiftness of its supreme moments, the first performance of the Diaghileff Ballet Russe . . . made all other dancing we have seen here seem like child's play.”14 Schallert continued at length, almost rhapsodic: “They have an all-consuming energy that leaves you dazed, captivated, and inspired at once. The dancers come and go like magic, they concentrate more motion into the minute than could seem possible, and they finally leave you again seemingly almost before you had realized their presence. . . . [T]here is something inconceivably swift in the magnetic power of this troupe.”15 As exciting to critics as the choreography were the musical performances that accompanied it. “The pulsation of the Borodine [sic] music to the Prince Igor, played in masterly style by an orchestra,” the Los Angeles Times reported, was “worth more than half the price of admission in itself.”16 A critic for the Los Angeles Examiner concluded a description of Cléopâtre by noting, “The Balakireff music is superb; rushing hither and thither with the sweep of the violins predominant—the clash of the cymbals and rumble of tympani combining with the winds to form an overwhelming tornado of Russian fire and expression.”17 The close relationships between music and choreography were praised as well; after watching the company's rendition of Carnaval, Schallert asserted, “Schumann must have dreamt something like this when he wrote this piano series.”18But it was the company's dancers—especially the company's male dancers—who stole the show. Descriptions of the grace and delicacy of female dancers including Lydia Lopokova quickly gave way to lavish praise for Nijinsky's “technical wizardry” and “many-sided genius,” his “rhythmic perfection” and “delicate yet virile suppleness.”19 As Edwin Schallert waxed in an account that, despite its euphoria, was fairly typical of the Los Angeles reaction, “Strange realms does the genius of Waslav Nijinsky invade. Amid the floating clouds of his imagination's horizon arise unreal colors and mysterious shapes of things wherewith to create the background for realities that venture into untried provinces in the world of art. He opens by turn the portals of charm, of fire, of magnificence, he treads the corridors of symbolism and drama and the plastic arts, and he and his assistants lead their audiences through the ever-varying suggestions of these things.”20 Similar accolades were awarded to the “wonderfully expressive” Bolm, whose “facial expression and muscular grace plac[e] him on a plane but little removed from the master, Nijinsky, himself.”21 A few critics acknowledged the company's difficulty moving scenery quickly on opening night, but the concerns about ticket prices, the sexual overtones of Faun, and racial representations in Schéhérazade that had dominated New York and Boston reviews were either absent, dismissed outright, or even mocked by the Los Angeles press.22 Los Angeles audiences, in short, loved the Ballets Russes.The Ballets Russes dancers and personnel were equally enamored with Hollywood, based on anecdotes that emerged in both trade press and first-hand accounts. Company members visited at least two film studios, where they watched the production process with curiosity and wonder. In the February 1917 issue of The Moving Picture Weekly, a short article described the company's tour of a Universal City studio, where they looked on as director W. W. Beaudine shot one of his many comedy shorts. The article reports, The particular set on which they were working had a living room and a hall room next door. In the hall was a telephone on a table. The [ballet master] remembered he had an appointment and was late, and he requested permission to use the phone. Beaudine's sense of humor immediately came to the surface, and he said, “Why, certainly.” The ballet master sat for quite a long time at the phone and then appealed to the director. He tried again. Finally Beaudine told him it must be that the line was out of order. But the Russian never knew that the telephone cord extended no further than the edge of the carpet and that it was merely a “prop” instrument.23About halfway through Charlie Chaplin's autobiography, there is a similar—albeit far more poignant—account of Nijinsky and other Ballets Russes personnel watching the production of a short film in which Chaplin was acting (see Figure 2). According to Chaplin, Nijinsky “sat behind the camera, watching me at work on a scene which I thought was funny, but he never smiled. . . . Before leaving he came and shook my hands, and in his hollow voice said how much he enjoyed my work and asked if he could come again. ‘Of course,’ I said. For two more days he sat . . . watching me. . . . [A]t the end of each day he would compliment me. ‘Your comedy is balletique, you are a dancer,’ he said.”24The details of both stories are likely exaggerated, and the Moving Picture Weekly tale seems particularly apocryphal: it is difficult to believe that anyone associated with the Ballets Russes was not intimately familiar with the concept of sets and props. Indeed, the story seems designed to tacitly imply that company members embodied a sort of innocence—an exotic primitivity—when it came to modern technology like telephones and film. It also conjures for readers an oft-cited distinction between stage and screen in the ‘teens and early 1920s: film's ability to achieve a sense of realism to which stage productions could only aspire—or, in the case of the Ballets Russes, to which many stage productions did not aspire at all. Yet while highlighting the radical differences between comedy shorts and Schéhérazade, these anecdotes also highlight the intimate connections between dance and silent film. Perhaps most importantly, they point to the shared artistry and imagination of these two projects: the continuity between the experiments in choreography, design, and music that the Ballets Russes was conducting onstage as the troupe reimagined twentieth-century ballet and the experiments in movement, mise-en-scène, and visual language that filmmakers and actors were conducting in studios and on location as they imagined into existence narrative cinema. In these visits by Diaghilev's dancers to film studios, in Chaplin's attendance at the Ballets Russes premiere, in the open-minded and enthusiastic reception of the company in Hollywood and beyond, a reciprocal patronage, engagement, and admiration comes into focus.Though Ballets Russes performances were never recorded, the and of the company made their way into American film culture before the company's United States tours even the cinematic in which Ballets Russes aesthetics and of the company's were most immediately were film By the late ‘teens and throughout the large in as well as throughout the offered a feature film as of a larger audiences were treated to a musical by a of live stage and comedy with short films including films, and by the feature and often an or other musical on the of a as much by as by many were around particular a an or or a particular were of acts believed to with the feature film at hand and even with theater or the of can be film trade and newspapers often only the of by the of the However, a number of male Ballets Russes dancers are more than in the of large in several that they in and dance numbers at these Adolph and also in the two US for example, were both in the worked at the and in New York and at the in Los Angeles, the in the in New York and with in but left the company before the 1916, was the at the in and a dance school in the and both of with in before dance numbers in at the and in New York and the in this is to a It is difficult to the they looked and but it is that many or at least Ballets Russes of the company's at the as did at the a of was included on a in and the dances from Prince are as of offered there in both and Ballets Russes to the United States in in the film an of a at the that it would the of the ballet in associated with or inspired by the Ballets Russes was also frequently integrated into at many film during and in the of the troupe's American According to and of at large in newspapers and film trade of Schéhérazade and Till Eulenspiegel were as on such of to the of a also became a popular musical of these were at accompanied by and choreography that Ballets Russes a at New that Schéhérazade as the for example, the stage was with two and in and and a as a of the I a with a scene with a and all to out the music associated with the Ballets Russes both in and as film was actively in the of film trade These of associated with the company such as and exhibitors on where to and piano of their and praised theater and music for their with A in a December issue of Moving Picture for example, with a letter from an in of of the dances in Prince you me how to the there is no music but popular music in my little The that exhibitors the in New York for As was often the case with in film trade this was likely a by a than the of an the simultaneously and a demand for the company's music, a popular with audiences from the company's and exhibitors the to of it into their programs, if only to with their were the filmic in which the music, choreography, and male dancers of the Ballets Russes continued to be to long after the company left the United States is not surprising. offered an for dance and music with exciting musical and stage acts week in and week likely at the to music associated with the Ballets Russes and to the male were with the company in the American The numbers both Ballets Russes eager to of the company's performances and to see the dancers had often been in the company's film art music and comedy from stage to screen from an experimental film short to a popular dance accompanied by a had been in the orchestra an the of the Ballets Russes that most American all-consuming color, and of and But even as these male dancers on their with the Ballets Russes, also the to with new movement aesthetics and performance the of the both to new and and to more and than the company's own performances had As Adolph wrote in his autobiography, is no better for dancer and public than the motion picture the stages of in New Los Angeles, and beyond, male dancers like and were to their aesthetics, of dance, and themselves as performers, while simultaneously and American with and admiration for Diaghilev's own the music and choreography of the Ballets Russes were reprised in film programs, of the company's aesthetics, and were visible and in a number of feature-length silent films in the late and early the company's male dancers and were most visible in both the press the Ballets Russes tours and on the stages of it was the company's female dancers were most visible onscreen. female Ballets Russes dancers were by studios to in films following the second American tour, often in that a to they had a number of films about fictional Russian often played by American were made during these These or in Ballets the and performances of the company's female dancers. Indeed, while film the company's male dancers a to themselves as and at a from Diaghilev's these feature films female Ballets Russes and time and their and performances became of the company and Russian more it is one of the films a fictional Russian ballerina that most conjures the Ballets Russes onscreen. The which and is was by in as the second Ballets Russes tour was to a by the film in the of Russian dancer and A the film as she to with a ballet company and an The company's director that she is the of a Russian and all is when and with making way for to a the film's narrative and visual there are several references to the Ballets Russes and the that had around the company by 1917. Perhaps most the film troupe's from to for its premiere Diaghilev's of the Ballets Russes in the for its first The director in the film also to was with a and around about sexual and a relationship with Vaslav Nijinsky However, the Ballets Russes is early in the film after several of dance an Ballet Russe Ballet In the that and Ballet by Theodore Kosloff's an extended by a large of dancers. It is not the Ballets Russes's choreography, of course, but the and are not the film and theater music would likely have attempted to highlight the by the with from Those had seen the company would have the and members could quite have it for the and publicity for the film on Kosloff's as evidence of the and of the film's dance if not the film as a A dancer had arrived in New York City to and in and would go on to as dance master of the Metropolitan Company in the Kosloff's with the Russian Ballet were and his by was described as a and Russian engagement for the the trade press was of the most ever made in the motion picture and the for Moving Picture came close to that the film was as as the Ballets other ever such of the art of the Indeed, went so far as to that the stage with Kosloff had into a As performance was and by the presence in the of . . . is of how these of the dance go about in and how they into of dancing These dancing in

Time Bomb from the West: Video, the Advertising Industry, and Consumer Culture in Late-Socialist Czechoslovakia

The Politics of Nordsploitation: History, Industry, Audiences

As a commercial entertainment sector, the film industry in Australia presents an economically viable commodity, with AU$1087.5 million worth of box office revenue being made in 2009 (Screen Australia, http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/gtp/wcboadmission.html, 2010). With such a significant audience to entertain, it is unsurprising that film provides an ideal avenue for the communication of music. Music is an important element in the feature film, being used to set a scene, emphasize a plot development or incite a given emotion from the viewer. Feature film music ranges from specifically composed score to pre-recorded popular music licensed into the film. Increasingly, the latter is being used in feature films – impacting on the budgets, marketing and sound personnel of a film in a myriad of ways (see Smith, The Sounds of Commerce, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). Of these sound personnel, the music supervisor is arguably impacted upon the most, and this can be attributed to the music supervisor's role to ensure all music within the film soundtrack is cleared and used in accordance within the legal rights of the licensor. However, the music supervisor in the Australian film context extends far beyond such clearances, with such personnel deciding which tracks are selected for the film and even suggesting certain pieces to the director – thus playing a creative collaborative role in the production. This area of communication in the Australian feature film industry is largely overlooked or marginalized in academic research (see Coyle, Reel Tracks, Eastleigh: John Libbey, 2005, for some tentative research). This interdisciplinary paper contributes findings from interviews conducted by the author with Australian music supervisors throughout the period 2007–2009. It charts both formal and informal networks and communication modes between film and music industry personnel working within the Australian entertainment industry to show the complexity of industrial practices in the contemporary period.

The phenomenon of fantasy transmediality (Rebora 2016) has been discussed by many researchers and scholars during the last decade. The need for the creation of alluring cultural products in the highly competitive new media environment has led to synergies between many cultural industries and/or cultural producers, such as film, music, literature and videogame industries, etc. Many well-known and fan-developing narratives have been remediated – repackaged and redistributed – through the various media, answering to the contemporary nostalgia of pastness (Williams 2016), the cherishing of the familiar and intimate, as well as the need to further popularize “a pre-conceived merchandising industry” (Ball 2002), create new side-products for a fan community or even offer escapelands, which fantasy narratives succeed in creating. This paper will examine the translation and adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (LOTR) to different media and cultural industries, such as:- Peter Jackson’s films, - role-playing games (RPGs), - the music industry – with reference to well-known songs and bands.Through comparative analysis of certain segments of the LOTR industry market and comments made by fans on digital platforms, the paper underlines the basic story elements of the Tolkien universe, as adapted to each above-mentioned variant and examines the role of fans in the digital semiosphere.

In an age of unprecedented connectivity and cultural exchange, the world of cinema has undergone a paradigm shift that transcends borders and challenges traditional notions of storytelling and commercial success. Central to this transformation is the genre of science fiction films, which has emerged as a captivating canvas for exploring futuristic visions and probing the boundaries of human imagination. The interplay between globalization and the commercial dynamics of science fiction films has sparked a new era of creativity, collaboration, and cross-cultural resonance within the film industry. Furthermore, the pursuit of blockbuster visuals, often associated with Hollywood productions, has led to substantial shifts in production costs. These costs, in turn, wield a direct influence over the scale and quality of science fiction films, shaping their narrative depth and technological prowess. As the cinematic landscape extends its boundaries, effective marketing strategies have emerged as a linchpin for success. Striking the delicate balance between global outreach and localized engagement is paramount, as it dictates how a film resonates with its audience and finds its place in the global arena. In conclusion, a profound comprehension of these intricate and interwoven dynamics is indispensable for filmmakers, studios, and scholars seeking to navigate the ever-evolving global tapestry of science fiction cinema.

Film beyond boundaries: film, migrant narratives and other media

Schlager shows were one of the main attractions on early Finnish television. Featuring a popular music genre, the shows were soon followed by a wave of Schlager films. In this article, I discuss Schlager film as an intermedial genre that sheds light on the early forms of cooperation between television, film and record industries. Focusing on the Schlager film Hit parade (1959), I suggest that while television was often seen merely as a competitor of the film industry, contributing to the crisis of Finnish film production, the relation between the two was more ambiguous than that: the case of Hit parade indicates that the film industry was also interested in the potential provided by the new medium.

This chapter provides an outline of the industrial landscape of the music video industry as it grew out of visual marketing methods for promoting the single in the 1930s, through to the emergence in the late 1970s of an independent production industry, and to the MTV era and the current YouTube era. The chapter describes the tripartite structure of music video (music industry, production industry, exhibition platforms). It demonstrates that music video production is horizontally integrated within the screen industries and highlights some of the “functions” that music video fulfils within those industries as a whole, such as talent development and research and development (R&D), particularly in post-production. It suggests that the music video economy functions partially as an unofficial gift economy with collaborative authorship, drawing genre codes from both the popular music industry and the film and television industries. It examines the conflict between music video as a global industry and interventions by nation states to support domestic cultures, particularly in France, Cuba, and the Middle East, and focuses on the success of the South Korean government in strategically redeveloping its music industry with video driven K-Pop.

The business of content providers is being threatened by technology advances in hardware, software and IP-networks such as the Internet or peer-to-peer file sharing systems. The result is an increasing amount of illegal copies available on-line as well as off-line.With the emergence of Digital Rights Management Systems (DRMS), the media and entertainment industry seems to have found the appropriate tool to simultaneously fight piracy and to monetize their assets. Although these systems are very powerful and include multiple protection technologies, it is currently unknown to what extent such systems are used by content providers.This paper provides empirical results, analyses and conclusions related to Digital Rights Management Systems and the protection of digital content in the music, film, and print industries. It outlines the similarities and the differences of usages among the above mentioned industries. The paper concludes that each industry uses different protection technologies and that password and encryption are the most frequently used. The majority of the respondents are satisfied with their current protection but want to enforce it in the future due to fear of increasing piracy. The requirements for DRMS are perceived differently from industry to industry as is the average amount of investment. Furthermore, approximately half of the respondents from the music industry do not believe in the ability of DRMS to reduce piracy, whereas respondents from the film and print industry believe that DRMS will be able to do so.

Copyright Piracy is pervasive in Nigeria and consequently, it has affected the fortunes of copyright owners. The Copyright Act provides for anti-piracy measures in section 25 of the Act, which empowers the Nigerian Copyright Commission to make regulations to combat menace. Based on this power, the Copyright Commission has made regulations and adopted various measures to combat copyright piracy in Nigeria. This paper examined the impact of the Copyright Act anti-piracy measures and the copyright regulations on the war against piracy in Nigeria. It was found that the anti-piracy measures provisions of the Copyright Act and the regulations made pursuant to the Act have impacted positively on the fight against piracy particularly in the music and film industries where the Commission has successfully deployed litigation to hold violators accountable. Despite the positive impact, the paper also found that the efforts of the Commission to prevent piracy are inadequate, especially in the area of online/internet piracy where the Commission has not developed measures to prevent breach of copyright in the music industry. The paper recommended amongst others the strengthening of the anti-piracy measures under the Copyright Act and the proper training and equipment of the Nigerian Copyright Commission to enforce the Copyright Act.

The South African film industry, due to its inability to handle American Film Imperialism and put in place effective strategies to develop the South African film industry, has been virtually stagnant for decades. Arguably the most serious challenge, as often highlighted in research, is of ‘an industry fighting against the Hollywood machine’. The question that immediately comes to mind is: How does the United States manage to maintain world film domination? Although the SA film industry was established before Hollywood came into existence, the United States today accounts for 75 per cent of the world’s feature film market, while South Africa accounts for less than 1 per cent. This places an obligation on SA film-makers to design a turn-around strategy. During the 1980s when the French film industry (which pioneered motion pictures) was struggling, having encountered the same problem, a project similar to that advocated in this article, was initiated by the Minister of Culture, Jack Lang. French President Francois Mitterrand increased financial aid to the French film industry and the film Jean de Florette (Berrie, 1986) was produced. Jean de Florette attained commercial and critically acclaimed success and it is still making money to this day. In the United States Jean de Florette was hailed as the best foreign language film of 1986 and it went on to win numerous international awards. Jean de Florette was in 2010, for example, hailed by Empire Magazine as ranked no. 60 of the 100 best films of world cinema (Wikipedia 2014). In The Maestro Film Project, a partial solution to the deplorable state of feature film production in South Africa will be put forward. Although a total turn-around strategy is multi-dimensional and extremely complex, a step in the right direction would be to produce a three-dimensional artefact-driven film model (feature film, 50 instructional DVDs and 50 articles) that; identifies existing artistic communication codes (some 300) that influence the dramatic impact of a film and captures each one in an instructional DVD; researches these codes to gain an understanding of how they contribute to increasing a film’s dramatic impact; and implements, in a feature film, these codes using the best film-makers in South Africa (maestros) to test their efficacy. This model, as an instructional tool, will be unique in the world as no such project has ever been produced. The closest to it would be ‘the making of’ productions frequently seen on television. The major difference is that these productions have a promotional objective with very little instructional value (the prime objective of the 50 instructional DVDs). First, the model can be used by experienced film-makers to gain insight and second, to train future film-makers who, in time, will contribute to the development of the SA film industry.

In the introduction to James Park’s book Learning to Dream, he states that “…the history of British cinema is one of unparalleled mediocrity.” 1 I would beg to differ and perhaps this book, a historical consideration of British film music and film musicals, might be taken as some evidence to the contrary. Britain not only has produced a range of outstanding films over the years, but has also highly created extraordinary material at the intersection of the film and music industries. Since World War I, the British film industry has worked in the shadow of its richer and more successful American relation. Yet despite American films proving over-whelmingly popular in Britain, British films often have retained a sense of their own distinct character, even in the face of the increasingly international status of film industries over the last half century. The British film industry lacked the rationalized production line that characterized American film production from the 1930s to the 1950s, which exerted a prescriptive effect on the music in British films. Rather than being a standardized element that was produced communally and to a strong blueprint, British film music often was more modest in sound and scale and was produced by a system that was altogether more artisanal in its methods.KeywordsMusical ScorePopular MusicFilm IndustryMusic IndustryConcert HallThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.