Film Catalog Research Articles

“Presented as originally created”: how Disney profits off racist content from the past on its streaming platform of the future

ABSTRACT Digital streaming services are dominating global media, yet little research exists studying them as functions of multi-billion-dollar conglomerates that shape culture. Disney+ launched in 2019 and within three months had 30 million subscribers, ushering in what the company called a “new era” of media. However, Disney+ relies on its parent media conglomerate’s film catalog, some of it racist, meaning the “new era” is anything but. This paper examines Disney+ to further explore one conglomerate-owned streaming service and shows, through an analysis of corporate records and trade publications using a political economy lens informed by Orientalism, how Disney+ positions itself as the future of media yet relies on “classic” content to fill consumer demand. This work extends a structural critique of Disney+ to show how “classic” racist content on the streaming platform of the future constructs a world of racism online that exists in perpetuity.

One Hundred Years of US–Mexico Border Film

This essay examines the structure, content, and evolution of an emerging Border Film Genre derived from an examination of over one hundred years of film concerned with the US–Mexico borderlands and originating from both sides of the border. The task of this particular essay is to demonstrate how film themes change and evolve over time, based on evidence from the film catalogue. The essay examines examples of transition pertaining to: the changing representations of women in film; the difference between Mexican and American filmmakers’ portrayals of undocumented migration; generational shifts in bordertown racisms; and the catastrophic consequences of law enforcement’s loss of the war against drug cartels, including the ‘domestication’ of violence and the decay of communities occupied by cartels.

The USIS, China, and the Postwar Order: The Film Catalogue as Archive Map

The USIS, China, and the Postwar Order: The Film Catalogue as Archive Map

Not streaming near you: FilmStruck’s failure and the demise of the cinema-specific model

ABSTRACT This article charts the rise and fall of FilmStruck – Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Criterion Collection’s cinema-specific streaming service. Despite its premier specialty film catalog (e.g., art-house, international, independent, and classic cinema) and loyal fans, WarnerMedia shuttered the service in 2018 – after two years in business. This article argues that FilmStruck’s demise revealed the limitations of cinema-specific models and the precarious status of specialty cinema in the streaming sector. Specifically, this article analyzes FilmStruck’s curation in relation to TCM and Criterion Collection’s respective cable programming and physical media practices. Doing so reveals that FilmStruck’s founders and professionals endeavored to reconfigure specialty cinema’s meanings and reaffirm the values of film-oriented practices in the streaming context. Ultimately, by historically situating FilmStruck’s trajectory and strategies within larger institutional contexts, this article illuminates modest, yet nonetheless important struggles over business models, cultural value, media specificity, and professional identities in the tumultuous 2010s-era streaming landscape.

Representing Realities: The Role of Documentary in It all Started at the End (2015) by Luis Ospina

Representing Realities: The Role of Documentary in It all Started at the End (2015) by Luis Ospina Cindy Bonilla Documentaries, then, do not differ from fictions in their constructedness as texts, but in the representations they make. At the heart of documentary is less a story and its imaginary world than an argument about the historical world. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality (1991) It all started in 1971, according to Luis Ospina and his entourage—a film renaissance that flowed through Cali changing the very essence of the city, its people and the way that cinema was produced in Colombia. It is from this period that the main characters from It All Started at the End (2015) emerged: Andrés Caicedo, Carlos Mayolo, and of course, Luis Ospina, the director. These three visionaries were the protagonists of an entire generation obsessed by cinema in the city of Cali, Colombia. This group of self-identified cinephiles are responsible for the creation and production of a collection of cinematographic works which have come to be considered a fundamental component of Colombia’s film catalogue. Victims of the so-called mal de cinesífilis, they managed to build a network that fashioned the foundation for cinema in Colombia. Between 1971 and 1991, a number of young people from Cali joined the three originators to grow a strong audiovisual tradition in an unfocused country—a country that at the time was being torn apart by violence, death, and drugs. This documentary film is a collaborative effort (much like many of the films that were produced by the Grupo de Cali coalition) to tell the story of the Grupo de Cali from those who remain. At first glance, this feature appears to be a memoir of the work and life of Ospina, who at the time of the production of this film was struggling with a serious form of cancer. However, this documentary goes far beyond this initial evaluation to uncover the story of the origins of the cinema movement that transformed Cali. Despite the war, violence, and drugs that were prevalent during this time period, Cali grew into a film Mecca, and the Group of Cali came to be known as Caliwood. This documentary is also a narrative [End Page 132] that pays homage to the living and fallen members of Caliwood. The film successfully transports its audience through time and space to deliver an insider view of what inspired this film in particular, and also the events that transpired throughout the 20-year period that this film seeks to represent. This brief analysis will attempt to explore the documentary techniques used within the film, through the perspective of critics like that of Bill Nichols in Representing Reality (1991). Additionally, due to the structure of the film, this analysis will seek to identify the use and significance of cinematographic devices like intermediality, transmediality, reflexivity, and intertextuality, beginning with “To Make You See: Photography as Intermedial Resource in Theatre and Film Adaptation” by Carmen Pérez Riu. These approaches will aid in the identification of the narrative aspect of the film, as well as the semiotic symbols transmitted through photographs and other transmedial and intermedial visual elements that complement the diegesis of the documentary. It is also pertinent to this study to highlight the significant role that Luis Ospina has played in the development of Colombian cinema, which is supported by his nomination to the Toda una vida de cine award. Presented by Macondo Awards1 in 2010, the award honored his lifetime of contributions to the development and the creation of meaningful works that represent Colombia’s reality through his own lens. Colombian documentary cinema, like any national cinema, is a historical process with an industrial and artistic dimension. The expression “Cinema of Colombia” or “Colombian Cinema” refers, in a broad sense, to the cinematographic productions made in Colombia or considered Colombian for other reasons. The history of cinema in Colombia began in 1897 when the arrival of the cinema to the country was first recorded. Only two years before, the Lumière Brothers’ apparatus2 had made its legendary public appearance in Paris, and the invention caused euphoria around the world. As a result...

De-demonising Japan? Transitioning from war to peace through Japan’s cinematic post-war cultural diplomacy in UNESCO’s Orient project 1957–1959

In 1959, UNESCO published a film catalogue titled Orient. A Survey of Films Produced in Countries of Arab and Asian Culture to familiarise Western audiences with Eastern cultures. Out of the 139 feature films included in the catalogue, 37 were Japanese. Through a discussion of the descriptions of the films provided in the catalogue, this article analyses Japan’s post-war cultural diplomacy in the context of the Orient project. The aim is to discuss the question of what purpose the Japanese films chosen for the Orient catalogue served in terms of cultural diplomacy. The analysis suggests the Japanese representatives aimed to position the nation in the international arena outside the Cold War political and ideological framework. Instead, they promoted national interests by utilising the catalogue project to renegotiate the country’s position in the post-war world with the larger ideal of intercultural understanding guiding the selection process and the meaning created for Western audiences.

A ‘window on the west’? An introduction to ‘Papka 63’

This publication consists of an introduction and a translated and annotated catalogue of foreign films in Soviet distribution from 1927 to 1953, i.e. throughout the Stalin era. This catalogue is one of the most complete records, which complements numerous existing lists, including of the so-called trophy films brought to the Soviet Union after the war by the victorious Soviet army when leaving Berlin. This serves as supporting evidence for the influence of foreign films on Soviet film-makers and audiences.

Alternative Entrances: Phillip Noyce and Sydney’s Counterculture

[Extract] Phillip Noyce is one of Australia's most prominent film makers - a successful feature film director with both iconic Australian narratives and many a Hollywood blockbuster under his belt. Still, his beginnings were quite humble and far from his role today when he grew up in the midst of the counterculture of the late sixties. Millions of young people his age joined the various 'movements' of the day after experiences that changed their lives-mostly music but also drugs or fashion. The counterculture was a turbulent time in Sydney artistic circles as elsewhere. Everything looked possible, you simply had to "Do It!" - and Noyce did. He dived head-on into these times and with a voracious appetite for its many aspects-film, theatre, rallies, music, art and politics in general. In fact he often was the driving force behind such activities.

The production and distribution of audiovisual works via new media in the light of European media policy: constraints and opportunities

PurposeAudiovisual works – especially cinematographic works – are at the heart of the changes resulting from the development of the information society. Media convergence radically changed the way traditional audiovisual content is produced, distributed, consumed and eventually archived. Film producers slowly started to experiment with new ways of digital production such as the shortening of release windows to favor new on demand services. How does this translate to European film policy? Due to the unique double nature of cinematographic works which are both economic and cultural goods at the same time, the European film policy is at the crossing point of media, culture, competition and heritage. This paper seeks to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachIn this research paper the authors assessed to what extent the adoption of digital technologies is stimulated throughout the value chain of film making and more precisely to what degree the distribution of a European culturally diverse catalogue of films is encouraged.FindingsFor the first time in history, European producers have the tools at their disposal to collaborate, promote and distribute internationally, at lower transaction costs and at a higher speed, and to look beyond their national market. The fast‐evolving technological developments provided the European legislator with the opportunity to strengthen and support the promotion of the European cultural identity in all its diversity. But is this also reflected in the current legislative framework? It is clear that different hurdles still need to be tackled.Originality/valueIn this research paper an overview is given of the regulatory steps that have been taken so far in the field of European film policy to stimulate the digital production and distribution of European film productions. In the context of new unfolding alliances between stakeholders and experiments with premium video‐on‐demand or shorter cinema release windows, the relevance of digital production and distribution schemes can no longer be neglected. The emergence of web‐based services including cloud computing is likely to accelerate this trend.

In Search of Lost Space: Stan Douglas's Archaeology of Cinematic Darkness

OCTOBER 139, Winter 2012, pp. 151–182. © 2012 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You enter a dark space—a gallery or, perhaps, a cinema. Railroad tracks, telegraph poles, and mountainous landscapes unfurl before you through cinematic projection. Or rather, as soon as you have properly lost your bearings, you are projected through the landscape by means of the cinematic ensemble. Thomas Edison’s turn-of-the-century film catalogue described the film as follows:

A Critical Study on Tokyo: Relations Between Cinema, Architecture, and Memory A Cinematic Cartography

This paper investigates relations between cinema, architecture, and the city of Tokyo. First, it discusses the role of cinematography as a medium for reading a city. Movies are considered as a mobile cartography that can be used to travel through the city. Second, it discusses the architectural relationship between memory and Tokyo, and the roles played both by the presence and absence of ruins in the works of architects Isozaki and Rossi. Third, it discusses a film catalogue that represents the most important moments of Tokyo′s 20th century architectural history. After a screening of almost one hundred movies related to Japanese society, forty were chosen because they related directly to Tokyo. They were classified as representative of some important moments of Tokyo′s 20th century urban history. Finally, this paper argues that in defining a cinematic history of Tokyo, some constants emerged: the architecture of Japan′s capital city, as seen through movies, is a realm of mutations in a perpetual state of change.

Reconciling Policy and Propaganda: The British Overseas Television Service 1954–1964

Reconciling Policy and Propaganda: The British Overseas Television Service 1954–1964

Vídeos didácticos de física y química

The spectacular development of audiovisual techniques in the last few years has provided a wealth of pedagogical resources which are clearly underexploited. The aim of this work was to improve this situation by making available resources known to teachers. For this purpose we compiled a catalogue of video tapes and films of use in teaching Physics and Chemistry to university students. The catalogue is available in two formats: as a printed list and as an easy- to -use computer -retrievable hypertext.

The British film catalogue

The British film catalogue

The British co-operative movement film catalogue

The British co-operative movement film catalogue

The Imperial War Museum: World war I film catalogue and ‘The Battle of the Somme’ (video)

The Imperial War Museum: World war I film catalogue and ‘The Battle of the Somme’ (video)

H&CP Service Offers Video and Film Catalog

H&CP Service Offers Video and Film Catalog

Review: British Film History: Pioneers of the British Film by John Barnes; British Film History: The British Film Catalogue, 1985-1985 by Denis Gifford

Review: British Film History: Pioneers of the British Film by John Barnes; British Film History: The British Film Catalogue, 1985-1985 by Denis Gifford

H&CP Service Video and Film Catalog—Hospital & Community Psychiatry Service of the American Psychiatric Association; October 1988, 54 pages

<b>H&amp;CP Service Video and Film Catalog</b>—Hospital &amp; Community Psychiatry Service of the American Psychiatric Association; October 1988, 54 pages

Video and Film Catalog Available Free From H&amp;CP Service

Video and Film Catalog Available Free From H&amp;CP Service