Movie Screen Research Articles

Impact of vertical integration on movie scheduling in Korea

ABSTRACT This study investigates the impact of vertical integration on movie screening decisions using data from the Korean movie industry (Korea in the text refers to the Republic of Korea, also known as South Korea). Previous studies have found that movie exhibitors (i.e. theaters) that own distributors allocated more screens when they release their affiliated movies. The novelty of this study is that it focuses on the impact of vertical integration on showtime scheduling of integrated players that own both distribution services and theaters. Controlling for seasonality, levels of competition, and expected quality of movies, the study found evidence of the dominating power of integrated players in the market that occupied more screens and put their movies in more favorable time slots. However, this power weakened after the opening week and did not appear by the fourth week. Although the integrated exhibitors are likely to screen their affiliated distributors’ movies more in the opening week, they did not block other distributors’ movies over time. Our study suggests that the integrated theaters’ screening decisions favorable to their own movies are better understood as the result of pursuing incentives rather than as the result of blocking competitors’ movies.

중국 소비자의 스크린쿼터제(Screen Quota System)에 대한 태도에 관한 연구

With the signing of the policy to increase imported movie screen quota in 2012, a batch of high-tech and highly conceptualized Hollywood movies will flood into the Chinese movie market, which will inevitably bring impacts to the developing Chinese movie industry. At the same time, this competition will also bring new impetus and inspiration to the Chinese movie development. The purpose of this study is to research the attitudes of Chinese consumers towards the screen quota system and their attitudes towards the continuous viewing of Chinese movies through studying he causal relationship between the models. For the analysis on the surveys, the statistics analysis tool program SPSS 25 and AMOS 24 are used. Factorial analysis, credibility analysis, variance analysis (ANOVA) and path analysis are based on the purpose of the research. The results are as follows. First, the results of the survey based on differences analysis in demographic characteristics show that men prefer their national culture and will continue to support Chinese movies. People with a high level of education prefer foreign cultures and feel that watching foreign movies is beneficial to improve their personal social status. People with high education are more prone to impulse shopping without plans. According to the number of times to go to the cinema to watch Chinese movies in a year, people who like Chinese movies will go to the cinema many times to watch Chinese movies to support Chinese movies. Second, based on the results of the path analysis, all the paths in the model are shown to be beneficial. However, only the path of social aggrandizement and attitudes toward the screen quota system is shown to be negative, so it is thought that the screen quota system is not conducive to improving people’s social status. If Chinese movies want to attract more people to watch, they need to improve their production technology and popularity.

Medical Student Leadership in the Student Oncology Society: Evaluation of a Student-Run Interest Group.

At our institution, we aim to foster interest in oncology through the Student Oncology Society (SOS). The SOS was formed in 2010 and since then has hosted numerous oncology-related events, such as career panels, patient survivorship celebrations, and movie screenings. The purpose of this study is to report the experiences from former student leaders of the SOS, particularly how their participation informed their career choice. Complete survey responses were obtained from 26 of 32 former SOS student leaders (response rate 81.3%). Out of the 26 respondents, 19 (73.1%) are pursuing an oncology-related specialty. The three most common competencies that were affected by participation in SOS, noted by 21 (80.8%) respondents, were learning about pathways to careers in oncology, understanding the multidisciplinary approach to cancer care, and coordinating events. By mean Likert score, the most important factors in career choice for respondents who eventually pursued an oncology field were having a mentor in oncology (4.44), a clinical rotation in oncology (4.31), research involvement (4.22), and SOS involvement (3.17). While SOS involvement played a role in career choice among our student leaders, having a mentor was cited to be the most important factor for choosing an oncology career. Thus, implementation of formal mentorship initiatives within the framework of oncology interest groups should be explored.

Curating Local Knowledge: Experimental Evidence from Small Retailers in Indonesia

AbstractBusiness practices and performance vary widely across businesses within the same sector. A key outstanding question is why profitable practices do not readily diffuse. We conduct a field experiment among urban retailers in Indonesia to study whether alleviating informational and behavioral frictions can facilitate such diffusion in a cost-effective manner. Through quantitative and qualitative fieldwork, we curate a handbook that associates locally relevant practices with performance, and provides idiosyncratic implementation guidance informed by exemplary local retailers. We complement this handbook with two light-touch interventions to facilitate behavior change. A subset of retailers is invited to a documentary movie screening featuring the paths to success of exemplary peers. Another subset is offered two 30-minute personal visits by a local facilitator. A third group is offered both. Eighteen months later, we find significant impacts on practice adoption when the handbook is coupled with the two behavioral nudges, and up to a 35% increase in profits and 16.7% increase in sales. These findings suggest both informational and behavioral constraints are at play. The types of practices adopted map the performance improvements to efficiency gains rather than other channels. A simple cost–benefit analysis shows such locally relevant knowledge can be codified and scaled successfully at relatively low cost.

РОМАН АЛЕКСЕЯ ИВАНОВА «ТЕНИ ТЕВТОНОВ» НА ФОНЕ ЕГО ПРЕЖНИХ ПРОИЗВЕДЕНИЙ

Alexey Ivanov's new novel «Shadows of the Teutons» is considered in the context of the writer’s main works written since the early 1990s. The authors put forward the thesis about the experimental nature of the book which is a printed text of an audio novel. Compared with the other works by Ivanov, especially such masterpieces as his metaphysical novels «The Heart of Parma» and «The Gold of Rebellion» and the realistic ones like «The Geographer Drank his Globe Away» and «The Rough Weather», «Shadows of the Teutons» differ in a simplified character treatment, lack of deep psychology and development of an adventure story to the detriment of its philosophical depth. In the novel, there is also a tendency to simplify complex historical issues, and the characters correspond to the familiar historical «masks»: a sneaky and mercenary fascist governor, a committed old pilot associated with ancient mysticism, a pure girl, suffering civilian population consisting of people that fell victim to propaganda and are ready to die rather than to face the Soviet army. Recognizable are the images of Soviet soldiers, the liberators that seem to have just stepped out of books or come from movie screens. Ivanov’s new novel is related to his other works by the lack of a ‘happy ending’ and ‘geographical inspiration’ which allows the author to create memorable scenery of East Prussia, its ancient castles and cities that existed both in the 16th century and in the first days after the Victory of 1945. The article concludes that the new novel by Alexey Ivanov, unlike his early works, is a conscious appeal to the style and plot of ‘mass’ literature, necessary for the book’s rapid commercial success to the detriment of its artistic level.

Imitating Christ and the Saints: Katrin Gebbe’s Tore tanzt/Nothing Bad Can Happen (DE 2013) as Hagiographic Narration

Erwin Panofsky already pointed to the fact that the then fairly new medium of film relied on the Western iconographic tradition and created iconographic conventions of its own. Therefore, it is not surprising that film makers exploited the visual and narrative treasures of the Christian hagiographic tradition on the movie screen throughout the medium’s history. They did not only re-tell the life of Christ and the saints, but also created new plots following and re-interpreting the established conventions of hagiographic genres. Furthermore, the citation and adaptation of Christian iconographies is even used to render protagonists more complex and to regulate the viewer’s emotional response. The present article analyses Katrin Gebbe’s film Tore tanzt/Nothing Bad Can Happen (DE 2013) as an example of how biblical and hagiographic traditions are used in contemporary cinema to critically discuss religious mind-sets and the social dynamics of violent family structures. The director does not simply model the protagonist of her film as a modern day Christ who sacrifices himself for others, but clearly characterises Tore through references to other saints and biblical figures among whom Saint Francis, the alter Christus of the 13th century, is of major importance. Around this core idea, Gebbe creates a dense visual texture of hagiographic signs and allusions contradicting and enforcing one another so that the viewer’s uncertainty grows as to how to judge the events on screen.

When Title IX Is Not Enough

When Title IX Is Not Enough Lyra Walsh Fuchs (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Students at Columbia University in 2014 with a mattress in support of Emma Sulkowicz's project against sexual assault, “Carry That Weight.” (Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) [End Page 48] When I was a junior in college, I ran into a problem at Art House, a combination residential hall and space for programming and events that I managed. Because we often had parties, movie screenings, and concerts, our living room was open to the whole campus. And because it was common knowledge not to go forward with any complaints under Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal aid—our dean of Title IX, Scott Backer, had a bad reputation even before his firing for revelations of sexual misconduct with a minor—several residents came to me with concerns about running into someone who had harmed them, or made them uncomfortable, in their own home. Completely unsanctioned by my employers at the university, the residents and I developed a DIY safety system. First, I taped an envelope to my door where people could anonymously drop names written on slips of paper. With those names, I made a list that I would recite to the residents checking student IDs at the door (a regular school policy) on the nights that we had events. On at least one occasion, one of the named students made it through the doors. A male resident informed him that he was banned from the space and asked him to leave. He did, and as far as I know, he never returned. The weight of this project disquieted me at the time (I was fresh from an internship at a public defender’s office in New York City and beginning to read abolitionist literature) and leaves me conflicted now. On the one hand, we had created a registry; did we not believe in people’s ability to change? On the other hand, this was people’s home, and didn’t they have the right to not want specific people there? They wanted to dance without catching someone who had hurt them in the corner of their eye; they didn’t want to spend the night locked in their room afraid of who was walking through the front door. We were hardly alone in our pursuit of safety through ad hoc methods. The #MeToo movement, flourishing around the same time as we made our list, brought to the forefront the omnipresence of gendered and sexual [End Page 49] violence. The Shitty Media Men spreadsheet, a privately shared Google Doc that was quickly leaked to the press, introduced a digital crowdsourcing element that took off. At schools across the nation, public and private, large and small, students created hashtags, anonymous forms that collected names and stories, and Instagram and Twitter accounts to share them. I came to think of our list as part of a broader collection of experiments in DIY justice, a broad umbrella that includes private attempts to regulate spaces (like our list), public-facing attempts to shame institutions into action, and also more structured—but still not institutionally supported—intra-group grievance processes or restorative circles. Whether an envelope taped to a wall, a circulated list, or a social media account, these systems are imperfect. They are often messy and unwieldy; some have gotten their creators disciplined, threatened, and sued; with the exception of some restorative circles, they almost always offer no path for the accused to clear their names, work toward meaningfully changing their behavior, or recover from what can be truly debilitating ostracization and isolation. The list we made at Art House was short, with just a half-dozen names, but it felt heavy. I worried that if we alienated these young people, they might they fall deeper into hateful, aggressive behavior. And I worried that by not telling them they were on the list or giving them any avenue to get off it, we were imitating the permanent churn of criminalization. Still, if we couldn’t go to the university for help, either through the Title IX office...

Que horas ela volta? Análise bioética sobre gênero e classe

Resumo A exibição de filmes seguida de debate pode ser empregada como recurso pedagógico da bioética narrativa, visando compartilhar percepções e ampliar coletivamente a capacidade de refletir e dialogar. Neste artigo buscou-se aprofundar a análise de questões ético-políticas suscitadas em debate sobre o filme Que horas ela volta? com estudantes de uma universidade pública. O filme faz um resgate sócio-histórico da formação brasileira, expondo antagonismos ancestrais e uma cultura visceralmente racista, sexista e autoritária. Foram levantadas coletivamente as principais cenas-chave do filme, debatidas à luz da bioética social com base em leitura previamente recomendada. O processo levou os alunos a problematizar relações de gênero, classe, trabalho, poder e violência simbólica no Brasil contemporâneo – reflexões necessárias no contexto da educação superior em saúde.

A Sentimental and Sexual Education

Alongside all the other functions of movie theaters over the past century, in Mexico City men have used them as sexual spaces. A few cinemas like the Cine Teresa became notorious as sites in which men could find male sex partners. Yet even there, behaviors of and narratives by men who had sex with men mirrored those by men who had sex with women. This article focuses on the history of masculine sexuality in Mexico City movie houses from 1920 to 2010. The presence of women in these houses, either as workers, on the screen, or in men’s memories, along with the presence of men who went there to watch heterosexual sex on the movie screen, suggests that moviegoing in Mexico City can be analyzed through the lens of gender history as much as through that of the history of sexuality. Despite major social, cultural and technological changes over the twentieth century, examining movie audiences in terms of the histories of sexuality and gender reveals a startling amount of continuity in movie theaters as spaces of male sexuality.

Rest in Fame: Celebrity Tourism in Hollywood Cemeteries

This research is a critical study of tourism at four cemeteries in the Los Angeles area between 2013 and 2019: Hollywood Forever, Forest Lawn in Glendale, Forest Lawn in Hollywood, and Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. We examined these venues through the lens of celebrity tourism, since they are known as "Hollywood memorial parks," hosting the graves of some of the most famous stars in the world. Through participant observation, informal conversations, and content analysis of texts we aimed to understand how the relationship between these venues and the entertainment industry works as a "pull factor" for tourists. Our data collection and analysis led to three main findings. Firstly, we identified the motivations behind the increasing number of tourists who add Los Angeles cemeteries to their must-see list. Although scholars often define cemeteries as dark tourism destinations, our investigation shows that Hollywood memorial parks are more related to celebrity tourism. Secondly, employing the notion of "cult of celebrity," we described how the experience of tourists visiting their favorite celebrity's grave can be seen as a modern pilgrimage centered on a collective experience. Thirdly, we analyzed the cemetery as a commodity in which executives work to promote the site as the perfect location where one can spend the "eternal life." In this sense, we also investigated how memorial parks are often used as venues for cultural events, attracting a large number of tourists. As described in the findings section, initiatives such as movie screenings and guided tours transform cemeteries into much more than just peaceful places where to honor the dead, becoming venues for both commodification and spectacle.

Киното в Пловдив от 1944 до средата на 60-те години на ХХ в.

This article presents a brief history of Plovdiv’s cinemas from 1944 to the mid-1960s. It follows the fortune of Plovdiv’s movie theatres and the occurrence of new ones. The text gives information about the program, the number of movie screenings and also the number of visitors.

“It is you standing there”: Entering Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Performance Space in Dictee

ABSTRACT Cha's most well-known work, Dictee (1982), is a mixture of lineated and prose poetry that includes film form (e.g., the inclusion of camera angles in the textual description of a character) and is punctuated by various images, stills from movies, and documents, among other things. The act of featuring the female film spectator as actually stepping into the movie screen from the very beginning of the “Erato Love Poetry” section of Dictee posits its reader, and especially the female reader, as being able to enter the text by way of the frequent white spaces or gaps that are intentionally left between letters, words, and pages. Cha thus empowers her female reader to be actor rather than merely acted upon, seer rather than merely seen.

– The specificity of graphic cinema on the example of "Hulk" by Ang Lee

In the article the author is trying to define the characteristics of a graphic cinema as one of the main trends in nowadays comic book film adaptations production. One of the main elements of this trend is an ambitious effort to adapt the formal aspects of comic books for a movie screen in the most accurate way that is possible. By using one of the first examples of graphic cinema - Ang Lee’s “Hulk” — the author is trying to reconstruct its mechanisms of the following the comic book language and find out where the limits of adaptation between comic book and film are.

Long Live Cinema! Long Live FESPACO. <em>A luta continua</em>

Long Live Cinema!Long Live FESPACO. A luta continua Claire Diao (bio) February 2005. In the open air auditorium of the Georges Méliès Cultural Center in Ouagadougou (renamed the French Institute of Ouagadougou), is being screened Ismaël Ferroukhi's Le grand voyage (2004, Morocco), opening on a star-studded night with a voice over by ARTE. "This film was born under a lucky star." In the stands, hundreds of spectators are religiously following this competing fiction feature film that traces the story of a boy, born in France, and his father, born abroad, going together to Mecca despite strong cultural misunderstandings. What about the first time I attended FESPACO! I was certain I would meet the film family (composed of directors, actors, technicians, faculty, and programmers from all over the world)! The screening of Diaspora films was sometimes done in French and anglophones had trouble finding their way around. Discussions on movies were held at Hôtel Indépendance, by the pool, although Ousmane Sembène can no longer attend, as he passed away the year before. Some dared to approach filmmakers they did not know, others stayed in their corners. And always, at the entrance of cinema rooms, those interminable queues, those crowded stairs, and those screenings where the magic of cinema transpires. A feeling of union and collectivity… For me who was born in Africa and raised abroad, there was a feeling of homecoming, added to my passion for cinema which, unintentionally created a perfect link between my father's country—my dear and beautiful Faso, cradle of FESPACO, INAFEC, CIPROFILMS, and CIDC—and that of my mother—cradle of the Lumières brothers, the cinematograph, the Cannes Film Festival, and the CNC. What to say about this feeling that I had then, watching dozens of films, rubbing shoulders with hundreds of moviegoers, meeting late Samba Félix N'Diaye, then president of the FESPACO Documentary jury backed by Écrans Association, of which I had the honor of being a member? This is where I met Teboho Edkins who was vilified in the Petit Méliès room for shooting a documentary about men spreading the AIDS virus in South [End Page 260] Africa. There, I met many journalists who later became my colleagues. There, I confirmed my love for cinemas from Africa which later guided my university and professional choices. During my internship at the Centre Culturel Georges Méliès, I had the pleasure of organizing two screenings for four hundred students from Ouagadougou around the Second World War. These high school students came in large numbers and above all, actively participated in the ensuing debate with their History teachers. It was a personal revelation—that of transmitting cinema–but also a cultural revelation. There was (and still is) in Burkina, an unprecedented thirst for learning, far from the overconsumption and overcrowded cultural offer available to French high school students, overwhelmed by TV screens, cultural outings, discounted rates and video recorders in class to illustrate courses delivered by their teachers. In my discussions with Ouaga high school teachers, two remarks held my attention: the first one was related to language. Savvy moviegoers like to see movies in VO. One teacher hailed me "Why screen a film in English when even French is not the mother tongue of our students?" Then the remark from this other lady: "This movie screening idea is very good. But why bring high school students to you while cinema could come to the students? You could reach a lot more people." Here are two remarks I have never forgotten and which helped forge my career. While studying cinema in France and then in England, I discovered many filmmakers and scholars, many of whom wrote great papers for the magazine Écrans d'Afrique edited by the Italian association COE. I realized that the cinema of a whole continent was often shrinking due to lack of knowledge, of interest and especially of means. We talk about "African cinema" as if there were only ten productions per year on the continent, whereas in reality, each country has built its cinematography since (or well before) the independences! The fight is on all fronts...

Emerging “2.5-dimensional” Culture: Character-oriented Cultural Practices and “Community of Preferences” as a New Fandom in Japan and Beyond

Emerging “2.5-dimensional” CultureCharacter-oriented Cultural Practices and “Community of Preferences” as a New Fandom in Japan and Beyond Akiko Sugawa-Shimada (bio) What is “2.5-dimension (2.5 jigen)”? In recent years, the term “2.5-dimension (ni-ten-go jigen)” has gained much attention within popular culture studies. The term “2.5 jigen” roughly means the space between the two-dimensional (fictional space where our imaginations and fantasy work) and the three-dimensional (reality where we physically exist). Within Japanese anime fandom, fans often use “two dimensions” to mean anime characters, stating, “I am only capable of loving the two-dimensional [characters] (2 jigen shika aisenai).” However, due to the growing success of cosplay and 2.5-D stage performances (theatrical adaptations of manga, anime, and videogames) since the early 2000s, the 2.5-D has begun to be used as an umbrella term to express virtuality embodied by actual human bodies as well as human bodies that look unreal, which I call “virtual corporality” (kyokô teki shintai). A magazine specializing in 2.5-D theatrical performances, Stage Push!, was published in 2014, and in 2016, the March issue of Da Vinci, Kadokawa’s entertainment magazine featuring 2.5-D, was immediately sold out.1 These magazines usually focus on 2.5-D stages under the name of “2.5 jigen.” In 2018, when NHK’s year-end traditional entertainment event, Kôhaku utagassen (Red and White Singing Festival) invited the singing group, Tôken danshi, from one of the most famous 2.5-D musicals, Musical Tôken ranbu as a guest, 2.5-D theatrical performances gained national recognition in Japan. Academic critical attention has been also drawn by some publications such as art and culture magazines Yuriika (2015, Eureka) and Bijutsu techô (2016 and 2016, The Art Handbook), featuring special issues on the 2.5-D cultural phenomenon. These magazines primarily focus on 2.5-D stages as cultural products. The Japan 2.5 Dimensional Musical Association, founded in 2014, defines 2.5-dimensional musicals as “theatrical presentations based on Japanese manga, popular animation and video games.”2 This is the typical categorization [End Page 124] of 2.5-D stages as seen from the production side for promotional purposes. However, fans use 2.5-D very differently, usually taking pleasure in realistic reproduction and reenactment of anime/manga/videogame characters (“virtual corporality”), fictional worlds, and the interaction between characters/actors and fans. As a matter of fact, 2.5-D theatrical performances are not stand-alone productions but, just like anime and manga, they have multiple episodes within a series, called a “season” (shiizun) in Japanese. For example, the first season of Musical Prince of Tennis ran from 2003 to 2010, with sixteen plays (or episodes) in which each had a run of between a few days and a few months.3 The merchandise sold during the event is one of the major motivations for fans to visit theaters. They exchange their unwanted merchandise among fans outside the theaters for their desired products, such as canned badges and photos of cast members in costumes. This exercise is called “trading,” and these venues serve as sites for fans to construct their communities of fandom. As such, if we can extend the scope from the cultural products themselves to the fans’ engagement developed through their deep commitment to character-oriented consumption of popular culture, then 2.5-D can be utilized as a means to detect wider cultural phenomenon among fans of popular cultural contents such as manga, anime, and videogames. I define the 2.5-dimensional culture as “cultural practices which reproduce the fictional space of contemporary popular cultural products (such as manga, anime, and videogames) along with the fans’ interplay between the real and fictional spaces.”4 Emerging as a cultural phenomenon in Japan in the early 2000s, 2.5-dimensional culture includes 2.5-D theatrical per-formances, cosplay, voice-actor/character concerts such as Love Live! School Idol Project (2010–), anime-induced tourism (also known as contents tourism), cheering-along version of anime movie screening (ôenjôei), and virtual YouTuber (or V-Tubers, such as Kizuna Ai). Ôenjôei...

Highlights of the 2019 Annual Meeting Graduate Student Committee Events

The Graduate Student Committee is proud to report on the successful, student-led events from the 2019 Annual Meeting that took place in November in San Antonio. Each day of the meeting, students had opportunities to enhance their leadership skills, network with colleagues, and learn about career paths from professionals in different fields. These events were well attended and received positive feedback from the attendees. Events in San Antonio kicked off with the Graduate Student Leadership Conference on Saturday. This two-day event provided graduate students the tools to improve their leadership skills through interactive sessions run by professionals in leadership ethics, etiquette, professional planning, and leadership styles. A highlight of the conference was the DiSC personality assessment. This behavior assessment tool helped students determine their personality traits and how they can be used for conflict management and effective leadership. The conference ended with a shared lunch between conference attendees and Society leaders, allowing students to ask practical leadership questions. The Student Networking Session was a success with more than 110 participants. Approximately 30 of the participants were mentors representing academic research, extension, industry, and government. There were two invited speakers at the session, Dr. Marion Limberger (Corteva Agriscience) and Dr. Martha Mamo (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) who gave short presentations on networking skills and professional communication. The Graduate Student Committee would like to thank Corteva Agriscience, Dr. Limberger, Dr. Mamo, and all of the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA volunteer mentors who made this a valuable experience for graduate students. Graduate students who participated in the Graduate Student Leadership Conference at the 2019 Annual Meeting. The Career Paths Session consisted of five panels of professionals with different areas of expertise. Approximately 100 students, post-docs, and early career members rotated through the panels to talk with experts in academic teaching and extension, research in government labs and academia, and careers with nonprofits, consulting, and advocacy. The informal panels allowed participants to ask panelists about their career path, leading to meaningful conversation and discussion. More than 25 professionals volunteered their time to be panelists for this session, and the Graduate Student Committee is thankful that Society members are always willing to donate time and expertise for graduate student events. The committee will begin searching for volunteers for 2020 Annual Meeting events in August 2020. In the meantime, if members would like to engage with graduate student events, they can contact the Graduate Student Committee or the staff liaison Katie Reiels (kreiels@sciencesocieties.org) as the Annual Meeting approaches. Many graduate students who attended the Leadership Conference and the Student Networking Session on Sunday gathered with other graduate students at the Graduate Student Social at Café Ole on Sunday evening. The social was a great opportunity for ASA, CSSA, and SSSA graduate students to meet other students over drinks and appetizers in a relaxed setting. One of the most successful events from San Antonio was the Trivia Night Social that took place on Tuesday prior to the Food Evolution movie screening. About 80 people gathered to test their knowledge on agronomy, crops, soils, and environmental science in the bar-style trivia. The Graduate Student Committee looks forward to organizing this event again for Phoenix Annual Meeting in 2020! Our time in San Antonio closed with the monthly ACS Graduate Student Committee meeting. Committee members gathered to reflect on the 2019 Annual Meeting and the collective effort that made it a success. The committee recognized outgoing 2019 ACS Graduate Student Committee Chair Ekrem Ozlu for his leadership that helped make the events in San Antonio a major success. Moving forward, the committee is going to build on the successes of the 2019 Annual Meeting and begin planning its initiatives and goals for 2020 and the events for the Annual Meeting in Phoenix in 2020.

Latent Estimation of Piracy Quality and its Effect on Revenues and Distribution: The Case of Motion Pictures

Conventional wisdom holds that illegal copies cannibalize legitimate sales, even though previous research has found mixed effects, with illegal copies acting as both a substitute and complement. Yet, a relatively unexamined aspect to date is the quality of illegal copies. Building on product uncertainty and production quality, we propose that higher quality copies can benefit sales when product uncertainty is high, such as during the launch period. Using motion picture and online piracy data, we estimate piracy quality using a latent item response theory (IRT) model based on keyword signals in the copies. An interdependent system jointly estimates movie screens, revenues, downloads, and available illegal copies with piracy quality in both the launch and post-launch periods. We find that at launch, when rather little is known about the movie, higher quality illegal copies demonstrate a positive effect on revenues (sampling). In the post-launch period, however, higher quality illegal copies exhibit a negative effect on revenues (substitution). The findings suggest producers can alleviate product uncertainty through higher quality samples at product launch while diluting piracy quality post-launch. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Representation of the Image of the Russian-Japanese War on the Soviet Movie Screen and Theater Stage, 1940s — 1950s

The Russian-Japanese war of 1904—1905 was unsuccessful for Russia, which caused difficulties in embedding images of war in cultural memory. The research is carried out in line with the history of memory, using the concepts of “cultural memory” and “commemoration”. The victory in the Soviet-Japanese war in 1945 “rehabilitated” the Russian-Japanese campaign of the beginning of the 20th century, after which work began on images of the war in historiography, literature, cinema, and theater. The article analyzes the representation of images of war in the film “Cruiser «Varyag»” (1947) and the play “Port Arthur” (1953).

Deep Tone Mapping Operator for High Dynamic Range Images.

A computationally fast tone mapping operator (TMO) that can quickly adapt to a wide spectrum of high dynamic range (HDR) content is quintessential for visualization on varied low dynamic range (LDR) output devices such as movie screens or standard displays. Existing TMOs can successfully tone-map only a limited number of HDR content and require an extensive parameter tuning to yield the best subjective-quality tone-mapped output. In this paper, we address this problem by proposing a fast, parameter-free and scene-adaptable deep tone mapping operator (DeepTMO) that yields a high-resolution and high-subjective quality tone mapped output. Based on conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN), DeepTMO not only learns to adapt to vast scenic-content (e.g., outdoor, indoor, human, structures, etc.) but also tackles the HDR related scene-specific challenges such as contrast and brightness, while preserving the fine-grained details. We explore 4 possible combinations of Generator-Discriminator architectural designs to specifically address some prominent issues in HDR related deep-learning frameworks like blurring, tiling patterns and saturation artifacts. By exploring different influences of scales, loss-functions and normalization layers under a cGAN setting, we conclude with adopting a multi-scale model for our task. To further leverage on the large-scale availability of unlabeled HDR data, we train our network by generating targets using an objective HDR quality metric, namely Tone Mapping Image Quality Index (TMQI). We demonstrate results both quantitatively and qualitatively, and showcase that our DeepTMO generates high-resolution, high-quality output images over a large spectrum of real-world scenes. Finally, we evaluate the perceived quality of our results by conducting a pair-wise subjective study which confirms the versatility of our method.

Religious Beliefs Concerning Cinema Versus Iranian Women (1904–1934)

Nine years after the first movie screening in Europe by Lumiere brothers, Mirza Ibrahim Khan Sahhafbashi opened the first place to show movies in Tehran, Iran, in 1904. At first, some clergymen tot...