Motion Picture Theater Research Articles

“Mr. Stubbs the Entertainer” and His Travelling Motion Picture Show

In the early days of cinema, before motion picture theatres were fully established, travelling exhibitors went from place to place with their stock of films, projectors, and other equipment, offering people a chance to see, sometimes for the first time, the new technological phenomenon of the age. A number of these exhibitors are relatively famous—and they had large business operations. A much lesser-known, and independent, travelling “showman” was James Stubbs, of Peterborough, Ontario, who took his regional and religious bandwagon on the road for about fifteen years, contributing as he went to the growth and acceptance of motion picture exhibition in the province.

Touring the Screen: Cinematic Resonances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

Touring the Screen: Cinematic Resonances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

‘Thrills Sweep Like Electric Currents through Multitudes’: Spectacle, Sociality, and Media Competition in Mid-Century America

This article analyses contemporaneous debates over the competing screen formats, venues, and technological platforms designed to deliver moving images to domestic and public audiences in mid-twentieth century America. The postwar crisis in the American theatrical box office witnessed changes in film gauges, aspect ratios, and theater sound as well as in the architectural design of motion picture theaters, and the article examines the failed innovation of theater television and the explosive growth of the drive-in theater in the 1950s as responses to rising competition from advertising-supported domestic television. Drawing upon the rich technical, trade, and popular press literature of the period, the author argues for the relevance of the postwar debates over moving image reception for contemporary controversies over the viability of theatrical exhibition in the era of streaming video and global pandemic.

RESEARCH ON THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY: STATE OF THE ART AND NEW DIRECTIONS OFF THE BEATEN TRACK AWAY FROM THEATRICAL RELEASE

The motion picture industry has been subject of extensive academic research over the last decades. However, most scholars focused on the U.S. theatrical motion picture market. The number of research activities regarding even more profitable release windows, such as home video or television, has been substantially lower. Although international distribution is essential for a motion picture project to break even, there has been little significant re-search on most other markets. This paper aims at summarizing the current state of research on the motion picture industry, particularly from marketing and management perspective, revealing research gaps, and proposing recommendations for future research endeavors. Therefore, a three-pillar scheme is developed to systemize previous findings: Research on intraorganizational decision making, contractual relationships between national stakeholders, and international market competition are differentiated. Since these insights are mainly derived from U.S. theatrical exhibition, they can hardly be applied to other markets and exhibition windows. Thus, potential research areas are identified to expand knowledge of posttheatrical and international markets.

Very Simple Markov-Perfect Industry Dynamics

Abstract: This paper develops an econometric model of industry dynamics for concentrated markets that can be estimated very quickly from market-level data on demand shifters and the number of producers. We show that the model has an essentially unique symmetric Markov-perfect equilibrium that can be calculated from the xed points of low-dimensional contraction mappings. We characterize the model's identi cation and extend Rust's (1987) nested xed point estimator to account for the observable implications of mixed strategies on survival. We illustrate the model's application with ten years of County Business Patterns data from Motion Picture Theaters in 573 Micropolitan Statistical Areas.

Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 by Thomas Doherty (review)

Reviewed by: Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 by Thomas Doherty Leslie Fishbein (bio) Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939. By Thomas Doherty. New York: Columbia University Press 2013. 429pp. Thomas Doherty’s Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 is a tour de force of film history, deftly weaving together many strands of Hollywood and world history to explain Hollywood’s vexed and often vexing relationship to the rise of Nazism and its charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler. Doherty begins his exposition with Hollywood’s first confrontation with Nazism on December 4, 1930, when a mob of brownshirts invaded a motion picture theater and trashed the screening of Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front, an award-winning lament of the slaughter of the young in World War I to nurture old men’s dreams of glory, and ends when after the death of its courageously anti-Nazi producer, Carl Laemmle, Universal Studios rereleased the film accompanied by a prologue reviewing the Great War and its aftermath, including the now iconic newsreel footage of the 1933 book burning. As Doherty notes, “Among the volumes being tossed into the pyre was, of course, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front” (364). To explain Hollywood’s convoluted relationships with Hitler between these historical bookends, Doherty’s prodigious knowledge of Hollywood history–the glamour and the gossip but also the economic forces that shaped decisions about production and distribution–allows him to provide readers with a multi-variant analysis of Hollywood’s initial neglect of Hitler and of its subsequent preoccupation even in present-day films with the Nazi leader. Hollywood’s obsession with preserving the lucrative German market for its films impelled most producers to comply with German demands for the Aryanization of those involved in film production and distribution, firing or relocating many Jewish staff members stationed in Germany and increasingly conforming to the demands of Nazi censorship of American films to be screened in Germany. During the first wave of Nazi terror, motion picture journalists and Hollywood producers evinced “the natural befuddlement of cool businessmen up against hot-headed fanatics” and remained oblivious to contemporary Nazi horrors and impending disaster (39). Nazi censorship meant that Hollywood films seeking to be screened in Germany had to obtain one of a limited number of import permits, to be granted a certificate issued by the Reich Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, and “to pass the home censor, who scrutinized the contents for moral, political, and eugenic purity” (25). [End Page 106] Just as the weak Weimar government had capitulated to Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda by rescinding the license for All Quiet on the Western Front, Hollywood moguls, many of them Jewish, not only conformed to the strictures of the German market but also imposed self-censorship within Hollywood itself. Hollywood relied upon the offices of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), which served the studio system by imposing self-censorship in order to avoid censorship by others. Moreover, in order to avoid offending Nazi officials and, in particular, the wrath of Georg Gyssling, the German consul in Los Angeles, Hollywood came to shun Jewish subjects in films, subjects that had been a staple of the industry since the 1920s with the enormous popular success of the first commercial “talkie,” The Jazz Singer (1927). Under the leadership of Will Hays and Joseph Breen, the MPPDA deployed the Production Code to shield Hitler and Nazism from public criticism, claiming that the code’s vague admonition that “the history, institutions, prominent people, and citizenry of all nations shall be represented fairly” meant that Hollywood was bound not to offend the people or culture of any nation on the planet. As a result, “under the Code, the transformation of the Weimar Republic into the third Reich was Germany’s business” (43). However, liberals and leftists within the Hollywood community, particularly actors and writers who had been active in the Popular Front, did coalesce to form the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL) and deployed skills honed during the fights to unionize Hollywood workers in dramatic efforts to combat Nazism abroad. Although little known today except among film scholars, HANL...

Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film Jennifer LynnPeterson. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.

Education in School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film Jennifer Lynn Peterson. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.Educational films are not a recent phenomenon. As reader will learn from this very interesting book by Jennifer Lynn Peterson, assistant professor of film studies, University of Colorado Boulder, many of earliest ones began as what author calls travelogues or scenics. These were a staple of early motion picture theaters, short films that depicted tourist destinations and exotic landscapes which were otherwise inaccessible to most viewers. Peterson's title is a play on words as the school of dreams reflects attitude of these early film-viewers to visit, if only through these short films, other parts of world. For modern traveler, social media makes it possible to show sights and sounds of a trip available to all right as visitor is in midst of site, but, right before World War I in early days of film, this was obviously not possible. Instead, early film viewer saw which were a form of virtual tourism or documentary that was often presented as lectures to supplement accompanying films and photos.Peterson attempts to bring attention to this early period in film history that she feels has been overlooked by historians. Most of emphasis of her discussion is on films and American West which was a considerable source of fascination to audiences in this period. Not surprisingly, many of early films were adventure stories and Westerns, with good cowboys and bad Indians. This book focuses on travel films exhibited in commercial US theaters during early cinema's transnational era, roughly years 1907 to 1915, when films first began to be shown in dedicated movie houses and cinema emerged as a distinct form of media with its own set of practices (2).Travelogues evolved from work of American writer and lecturer, John Lawson Stoddard, who began traveling around world in 1874; he published books about his adventures and gave lectures which he illustrated with black and white lantern slides he reproduced from his photographs. Then, in 1892, Stoddard recruited Burton Holmes as his junior associate; in 1897 Holmes succeeded his mentor then went on to become one of most important lecturers of his day. He coined term, travelogues, in 1904 when he introduced film clips to his lecture series. …

Telepresence and immersion with high-definition digital displays: Background and future directions for research

Abstract As Ultra-High-Definition Televisions (UHDTVs) increase in size and screen resolution, viewers may choose to sit closer to them for a greater sense of immersion in programme or game content. The article reviews the evolution of the immersive aspects of widescreen motion picture formats such as Cinerama and IMAX and their influence on widescreen television displays. Potential areas for future research in telepresence and immersion are suggested with the advent of 4K and 8K UHDTVs and the development of ultra-wide-angle digital Head-Mounted Displays (HMD). Producers of widescreen motion pictures, television programmes and video games are creating content with the goal of increasing viewer immersion – and digital display technologies are evolving to replicate the theatrical motion picture experience in the home. Future research will be required to study the positive and negative immersive effects of these technologies as they are adopted by consumers.

“Re: Sound v. Motion Picture Theatre Associations of Canada”

“Re: Sound v. Motion Picture Theatre Associations of Canada”

Education in the school of dreams: travelogues and early nonfiction film

In the earliest years of cinema, travelogues were a staple of variety film programs in commercial motion picture theaters. These short films, also known as scenics, depicted tourist destinations and exotic landscapes otherwise inaccessible to most viewers. Scenics were so popular that they were briefly touted as the future of film. But despite their pervasiveness during the early twentieth century, travelogues have been overlooked by film historians and critics. In Education in the School of Dreams , Jennifer Lynn Peterson recovers this lost archive. Through innovative readings of travelogues and other nonfiction films exhibited in the United States between 1907 and 1915, she offers fresh insights into the aesthetic and commercial history of early cinema and provides a new perspective on the intersection of American culture, imperialism, and modernity in the nickelodeon era. Peterson describes the travelogue's characteristic form and style and demonstrates how imperialist ideologies were realized and reshaped through the moving image. She argues that although educational films were intended to legitimate filmgoing for middle-class audiences, travelogues were not simply vehicles for elite ideology. As a form of instructive entertainment, these technological moving landscapes were both formulaic and also wondrous and dreamlike. Considering issues of spectatorship and affect, Peterson argues that scenics produced and disrupted viewers' complacency about their own place in the world.

Report from the Science and Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The mission of the Academy's Science and Technology Council is: ■ To advance the science of motion pictures and foster cooperation for technological progress in support of the art. ■ To sponsor publications and foster educational activities that facilitate understanding of historical and new developments both within the industry and for the wider public audience. ■To preserve the history of the science and technology of motion pictures. ■ To provide a forum and common meeting ground for the exchange of information and to promote cooperation among divergent technological interests, with the objective of increasing the quality of the theatrical motion picture experience.

A framework for automatic creation of motion effects from theatrical motion pictures

Motion effects are the most important physical effects of commercial feature films in the latest cinemas equipped with multi-sensory-effect systems known as 4DX theaters. This paper presents a fram...

Report from the Science and Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Science and Technology Council was formed in 2003 with the following mission: — To advance the science of motion pictures and foster cooperation for technological progress in support of the art. — To sponsor publications and foster educational activities that facilitate understanding of historical and new developments both within the industry and for the wider public audience. — To preserve the history of the science and technology of motion pictures. — To provide a forum and common meeting ground for the exchange of information and to promote cooperation among divergent technological interests, with the objective of increasing the quality of the theatrical motion picture experience.

‘An Added Bonus’: Local Films, Local Newsreels and the Strand News in Warsaw, Indiana (1938–1955)

In a recent essay on local films from Liverpool, England, Julia Hallam argues that such motion pictures remind us of the territorialising power of the cinema, its capacity to project place as well ...

The National Cash Register Company and the Neighborhoods: New Perspectives on Relief in the Dayton Flood of 1913

The National Cash Register Company and the NeighborhoodsNew Perspectives on Relief in the Dayton Flood of 1913 Peter S. Cajka (bio) It is quite obvious that contemporary events shape the writing of history. By viewing their own times, historians ask new questions about the past. The hurricane that hit the Mississippi-Alabama Gulf Coast in August 2005, dubbed Katrina, is turning out be such an event. Scholars have pointed out the devastation wrought by the storm, the slowness in rebuilding New Orleans, and the failings of government. Approximately 1,800 people lost their lives. Systemic relief efforts were few and far between, and the recovery of the city moves at a slow pace. Why did this happen the way it did? Certainly part of the answer lies in the history of the place where it happened, namely the Gulf Coast. Other answers are political, social, and economic. In searching for some answers, it may be useful to reinvestigate the floods that covered the state of Ohio at the end of March 1913—particularly the most devastated location, the city of Dayton. Approximately 360 people perished in the Dayton flood. Yet in just a few months’ time the city was returning to normalcy, and by 1922 the Miami Conservancy District was established to prevent future floods from repeating the episode of 1913. In light of Katrina, the relief and recovery efforts in the Dayton flood of 1913 seem all the more remarkable. Evaluating the events surrounding the Dayton flood provides an instructive case study in the history of relief and recovery from natural disasters. [End Page 49] Coming as it did in March 1913, the flood hit Dayton at a specific moment in the city’s history. Therefore, a brief examination of conditions in Dayton before the flood is necessary. The city, as one historian put it, “is at the mercy of the swollen Miami River.”1 Dayton experienced significant floods in 1814, 1828, 1847, 1866, 1883, 1896, and 1898. After the flood in 1898, Daytonians responded by constructing levies on both sides of the Miami. But their efforts were insufficient in protecting downtown Dayton. Yet, being adjacent to rivers had its advantages. In the early and mid-nineteenth century, waterways were economically valuable to cities in America’s midwestern heartland. The Miami Canal “provided Dayton with cheap transportation, water power, and connections with the outside world.”2 In spite of periodic flooding, and because of the city’s position along the water, Dayton’s population grew from 10,977 in 1850 to 85,333 by 1900.3 Prior to the turn of the century, Dayton underwent an economic shift away from agriculture toward industry. With machinery replacing human labor and a factory boom from steam and gas power, Dayton, in a region of the country that led in industry, science, and invention, stepped early into the industrial age. It witnessed the growth of corporations with its adjunct of salaried managers. Chief among them was the National Cash Register Company (NCR), founded in 1884 by John H. Patterson. Others included the Barney and Smith Company, Davis Sewing Machine Company, Dayton Power and Light Company, Speedwell Motor Car Company, and Dayton Engineer Laboratories Company. The growing wealth of the city could be seen in the urban consumer culture that was well established in Dayton by 1900. The generous selection of goods offered by department stores made the downtown a growing destination for shoppers. The major neighborhoods of the city all had grocery and drugstores, some owned by recent immigrants. The North Side, for example, had nine in-neighborhood grocers.4 Other small business included bicycle shops and printing presses. Around the turn of the century, wealthy residents moved out of downtown Dayton, making more space for banking, business offices, restaurants, and motion picture theaters. Between 1900 and 1910, Dayton grew by 31,000 people, and “the downtown would reap the benefits as more people shopped, banked, ate, and visited the city’s business center.”5 Business districts developed at the intersections of Keowee [End Page 50] and Valley and Third and Williams, the Dayton Arcade was constructed in 1904, Elder and Johnson opened for business in 1905, and the Rike-Kumber...

Cinema e história no fim da belle-époque belemense (1911-1913): contribuição ao cinema paraense do cineasta Ramon de Baños

This paper is part of the research currently underway on the pioneersof silent film in the state of Para, especially on the life histories and filmproduction of catalan Ramon de Banos (1890-1980), who lived in Belem between1911 and 1913. In the context of social, cultural, economic and political changesthat occurred in Para since late 19th century until the end of the “Belle Epoquebelemense”, it has been analyzed primarily the pioneers of cinema in Belem, thefilm boom of the early second decade of the XXth century, political disputes inPara, Ramon de Banos’ films production, and the growing cultural influence offilms and documentaries shown in the motion-picture theaters in the capital.

““An America Not Quite Mechanized””: Fanchon and Marco, Inc. Perform Modernity

This article seeks a fresh understanding of live motion picture theater prologues through an aesthetic and industrial case history of the Fanchon and Marco "Ideas", baroque stage revues that assumed no logical relationship to the films with which they billed. Fanchon and Marco's prologues, which traveled the West Coast Theatre chain throughout the 1920s, deliberately eschewed east coast variety's reverent borrowing from European high culture. The Ideas playfully spectacularized the absurdity and distraction that characterized modern experience and made Fanchon and Marco's prologue brand a national sensation, even as synchronized sound shorts competed for billing on theater programs.

Child Audiences in America's Nickelodeons, 1900–1915: The Keith/Albee Managers’ Reports

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1. Richard Butsch, The Making of American Audiences: from stage to television, 1750–1990 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000), 145. 2. Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York, Macmillan, 1909), 87. 3. Boyd Fisher, The regulation of motion picture theaters (1912), in: Gregory Waller (ed.), Moviegoing in America: a sourcebook in the history of film exhibition (Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 78. 4. Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: workers and leisure in an industrial city, 1870–1920 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983) and Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: working women and leisure in turn-of-the-century New York (Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, 1986). 5. David Nasaw, Children of the City: at work and at play (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985), 117. 6. David Macleod, The Age of the Child: children in America, 1890–1920 (New York, Twayne, 1998), 22. 7. Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: the politics and history of family violence, Boston 1880–1960 (Chicago, IL, University of Illinois Press, 1988), 181–184. 8. Rosenzweig, 201. 9. Macleod, The Age of the Child, 11. 10. Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: studies among the tenements of New York (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890), 180. Digitized from the University of Michigan, February 17, 2006. 11. Susan Tiffin, In Whose Best Interest?: child welfare reform in the Progressive era (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1982), 19. 12. David Macleod, Building Character in the American Boy: the Boy Scouts, YMCA, and their forerunners, 1870–1920 (Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 99. 13. Gordon, 125. 14. John Collier and Edward M. Barrows, The City Where Crime Is Play: a report by the People's Institute (New York, 1914), 10–18, also Nasaw, 23. 15. The Land Beyond Sunset (Edison Company; US, 1912), DVD, Treasures from American Film Archives (National Film Preservation Foundation, 2000). 16. William J. Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform: grassroots movements during the Progressive era (1986) (New York, Teachers College Press, 2002), 27–55. 17. Ben Singer, Manhattan nickelodeons: new data on audiences and exhibitors, Cinema Journal 34(3) (1995), 5–35; and Robert C. Allen, Manhattan myopia: or, Oh! Iowa! Robert C. Allen on Ben Singer's ‘Manhattan nickelodeons: new data on audiences and exhibitors’, Cinema Journal 34(3) (1995), 75–103. 18. All quotes from Keith/Albee managers’ reports come from the Keith/Albee Vaudeville Theater Collection at The University of Iowa's Special Collections Department, Iowa City. 19. Michael Davis, The Exploitation of Pleasure: a study of commercial recreations in New York City (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1910), 24–29. 20. Ibid., 24. 21. Michael Davis, quoted in Roberta Pearson and William Uricchio, ‘The formative and impressionable stage’: discursive constructions of the nickelodeon's child audience, in: Richard Maltby and Melvyn Stokes (eds), American Movie Audiences: from the turn of the century to the early sound era (London, BFI, 1999), 68. 22. Thomas Doherty, This is where we came in: the audible screen and the voluble audience of early sound cinema, in: Richard Maltby and Melvyn Stokes (eds), American Movie Audiences: from the turn of the century to the early sound era (London, BFI, 1999), 144. 23. Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1991), 9–15. 24. Musser, 27. 25. Ibid., 340. 26. Keith/Albee Collection, Manager's Reports, Boston, Christmas Week 1907 and 1908 and Philadelphia, Christmas Week 1909. 27. The Terrible Kids (Edwin S. Porter, Edison Company; US, 1906), DVD, Edison: The Invention of the Movies (Kino International Corp, 2005). 28. Musser, 345. 29. Macleod, Building, 28. 30. The Little Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, Edison Company; US, 1905), DVD, Edison. 31. Musser, 320. 32. Cohen's Fire Sale (Porter, Edison Company; US, 1907), DVD, Edison. 33. Jacob Riis, Hester Street—the School Children's Only Playground, photographic print, circa 1890, in Nasaw, 21. 34. The ‘Teddy’ Bears (Porter, Edison Company; US, 1907), DVD, Edison. 35. Musser, 350. 36. Miriam Hansen, Babel & Babylon: spectatorship in American silent film (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1991), 50. 37. Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York, Columbia University Press, 2004), 284. 38. Ibid., 285. 39. Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915 (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1994), 28. 40. In the Border States (D.W. Griffith, Biograph Company; US, 1910), VDis, D.W. Griffith: Years of Discovery, 1909–1913 (Image Entertainment, 1997) and The Little Girl Next Door (Lucius Henderson, Thanhouser Company; US, 1912), DVD, Thanhouser Collection: Kids and Dogs (Thanhouser Co. Film Preservation, 2006). 41. The Evidence of the Film (Edwin Thanhouser and Lawrence Marston, Thanhouser Company; US, 1913), DVD, Thanhouser Kids and Dogs. 42. Drummer of the 8th (Thomas Ince, Broncho Film Company; US, 1913), DVD, Civil War Films of the Silent Era (Image Entertainment, 2000).

Business as Unusual: Conglomerate-Sized Challenges for Film and Television in the Digital Arena

This article examines the diverse strategies that the film and television divisions of media conglomerates have employed in circulating their properties online. The author shows how historical relationships as well as long-standing business practices tied to both theatrical motion pictures and prime-time television series have affected decisions about what, where, when, and how content is offered on the Internet. Comparing the Internet-related activities of these different divisions sheds light on the distinct challenges each medium faces in the online realm and also points to the complex nature of the responses of contemporary media conglomerates to new technologies.

The Lost World of Twemlow and Kent-Watson: Mancunian Exploitation Film in the 1980s and 1990s

Films which have been exclusively distributed and exhibited outside the traditional conception of the film theatre or cinema have gained very little critical attention within film and media studies. In the case of domestic formats such as VHS this can be partly explained by the fact that, as Barbara Klinger notes, ‘film exhibition via television in the casual setting of the home still appears to constitute a break with the quality and mesmerizing power of cinema in the motion picture theatre’ (2006: 63). While this attitude to domestic exhibition may be slowly changing, largely due to HD formats and digital cinema projection bringing the two spheres closer together in the twenty-first century, in the 1980s the terms ‘straight to video’ and ‘direct to video’ were, when it came to mainstream films, widely accepted to indicate low-budget, poor-quality products not worthy of theatrical distribution. The negative connotations of the term ‘direct to video’ have meant that the work of a number of innovative film-makers, producing what might be described as broadly mainstream work and designed to be consumed domestically on video, has been omitted from the various histories of cinema. Indeed, the only really sustained attempts to explore video film production and distribution in Britain during the 1980s have focused on organisations and film-makers associated with alternative and avant-garde practice. In this article we want to redress this imbalance by focusing on the almost forgotten video film-making of Manchester-based Cliff Twemlow and David Kent-Watson. Between 1982 and 1992 this enthusiastic duo took notice of the newly available video technology and used it to build an unlikely career within, or rather on the outer fringes of, the British film industry. These two men were musician, actor, writer and one-time nightclub bouncer Cliff Twemlow and recording studio owner, soundman, cameraman and, latterly, film director David Kent-Watson. In this