National Film Research Articles

“Cultural In-Betweenness” in Borderland Films of Malaysian and Indonesian Cinemas

ABSTRACT This paper examines cinematic representations of the borderlands between Malaysia-Thailand and Malaysia-Indonesia in the twenty-first century. The films focusing on the region explore problematic issues such as the intersection of traditions, issues of identity and belonging, the modern nation-state system, and the citizens in these peripheral areas. This paper employs film discourse analysis, and the ideas discussed herein are crucial to the national cinemas of the region, as they operate in a manner akin to Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of the war machine, the smooth space, and nomadology. These representations raise questions about uneven power dynamics between the hegemonic center and the peripheral other. This investigation analyses two films: Batas (Rudi Soedjarwo, 2011) from Indonesia and Bunohan: Return to Murder (Dain Said, 2012) from Malaysia. This paper argues that the portrayal of borderlands and borders challenges the stability of inwardly focused and ethnocentric national cultural identities by presenting the borderlands of this island region as nomadic spaces, conveying a nomadic ethos and a sense of “in-betweenness” among its people.

António Lopes Ribeiro e António Ferro: cumplicidades cinematográficas e os projectos de internacionalização do cinema português

António Lopes Ribeiro was a major figure in Portuguese cinema for over three decades. In this paper, I intend to present and analyse the projects in which he was involved with the aim to create a national cinema with international projection, during the 1940s, and in particular during the Second World War. In order to guarantee the economic sustainability of the Portuguese film industry and continuous production, Lopes Ribeiro believed that distribution needed to be expanded beyond the traditional markets, namely, the colonies and the Portuguese emigration communities in Brazil. I will demonstrate how these internationalisation plans were only able to be materialised with the direct support of political power, examining his connection to António Ferro, the director of the organisation that oversaw cinema, the National Propaganda Secretariat/ National Secretariat of Information. Finally, I will look at the reasons why his projects for Portuguese cinema failed. Methodologically, this research draws on documents from the National Secretariat of Information and the Salazar archives, as well as other primary sources, mainly newspapers and magazines specialising in cinema, as well as a set of letters written by Lopes Ribeiro to António Ferro, from the Quadros Foundation.

‘Que le carnage commence !’: French cinema, la chronologie des médias and the rise of the streamers

ABSTRACT Since the arrival of Netflix – the world’s dominant Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) platform – in France in 2014, the French streaming market has undergone considerable growth with significant impact on the wider audiovisual landscape in France. The rise of VOD, and the French film industry’s response to the incursion of the US streamers (especially Netflix) into the French market, therefore have much to tell us about the transformation of France’s distribution and exhibition landscape since the mid-2010s. A significant part of this transformation has been the changes to the chronologie des médias – the French windowing system and a central part of the regulation designed to promote and safeguard the economic sustainability and diversity of the French film industry. This article will analyse the rise of the streamers in France with a particular focus on the impact of Netflix and the consequences of a radically transformed chronologie des médias, as France (Europe’s largest cinematic producer and one of the most mature, tightly regulated national cinemas in the world) fights to maintain its (cultural) specificity and cinematic independence in the wake of a realignment of the media markets at local and global levels.

Portuguese cinema and its discontents: a view from the film archive

ABSTRACT The article revisits the main arguments and underlying premises of the protracted debate on ‘national art cinema’ that has shaped Portuguese film studies for many decades. Drawing on international scholarly work on national cinemas and on my own experience as a researcher in the National Archive of the Moving Images (ANIM) of the Portuguese Cinematheque (Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema), I argue for a definition of ‘Portuguese cinema’ that takes into account the vast collections of non-fiction films that have been excluded from this debate. My proposal entails a shift away from prescriptive to descriptive understandings of Portuguese cinema, thus recognising its diversity, in the past as well as in the present. I therefore endorse a conception of national cinema that takes heed of wider and deeper historical processes, international ‘constellations’ and other (often contested or unacknowledged) traditions and practices. The argument builds on the analysis of Adriano Ramos Pinto – Vinho do Porto (attributed title), a short non-fiction utility film made in the late 1930s that belongs to ANIM’s holdings.

The Kinomatics Australian Film Production Dataset: A Curated Dataset Describing Australian Feature Film Titles and Personnel 1975–2022

Abstract This article presents a novel, extensive, and thoroughly documented dataset describing Australian feature films and the personnel filling ten key production roles on those films. The dataset is curated from public information in multiple sources and draws on further supplemental resources to verify, validate and consolidate this information. In total, the data describes 22,720 roles filled by 9,397 distinct people across 1,877 films, covering an important 47-year period in the Australian film industry. The authors outline how the dataset solves several problems for scholars interested in data that provides a historical record of the collaborative filmmaking process. In particular, to address concerns about known coverage problems with popular sources such as the Internet Movie Database, this dataset has undergone extensive manual checking to ensure that it is reliable as a source of information on a national film industry. Moreover, the authors have carefully and manually linked each person appearing in the dataset, which allows the dataset to provide a rich source of information for exploring the relationality of filmmaking collaborations. The inclusion of ten key filmmaking roles further expands the utility of the dataset beyond existing datasets which tend to focus on actors and/or directors, writers and producers.

Spanish tourist industry during the Franco’s regime through the touristic cinema (1951-1977)

Mass tourism in Spain became one of the most prosperous economic sectors in the mid-twentieth century, collaborating in the process of convergence with Europe, using the seductive power of the media, especially the cinema. A quantitative and (to a lesser extent) qualitative analysis methodology was followed. After reviewing the academic literature, the records of the National Film Library were consulted, selecting 87 films of tourist content and of national production, during the period of operation of the Ministry of Information and Tourism (1951-1977). The results have made it possible to identify the tourist segments, the cinematographic genres, the type of tourists, national or foreign, as well as the heritage elements and the services present in the tourist product of the time, visualizing the scenarios where the plots of the films are developed. The cinematography allows showing the elements that constitute the economic tourism model of Franco’s Spain, focused on towns on the Mediterranean coast, especially on the Costa del Sol. The research translates the antecedents of tourism marketing, using cinema as a means of communication that recognizes the economic transformation of Spanish society and the new image of Spain to be projected abroad.

Yeni ‘Film’ veya ‘Sinema’ Tarihi: Sinema Tarihi Yazımında Yeni Gelişen İlkeler, Kuramlar ve Metodolojiler Üzerine Düşünceler

Film as an artefact has long been the subject of study by “film historians,” whether in terms of stylistic authenticity, genre specificity, or “high theory” analysis. Conversely, film history has been written as if films had no audiences (Biltereyst et al, 2012, p. 693). This kind of filmic-textual research tendency lies at the heart of the legacy of film studies discipline. In 1973, Jean Mitry proposed an ideal of film history as simultaneously, a history of its industry, its technologies, its systems of expression (or, more precisely, its systems of signification), and aesthetic structures, all bound together by the forces of the economic, psychosocial and cultural order (Maltby, 2006, p. 80). Humanities-based film studies were first re-conceptualized by the initiatives of International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), during its 1974 and 1978 conferences. Drawing on the methodological stance of the French Annales school’s histoire totale, participants at the 1974 FIAF conference agreed on new historiographical methodologies for all rather than linear national cinema histories. In 1990, American historian Robert Sklar brought forward three types of “cinema historians” in which only second sub-type might be labeled as ‘film historian’ which has been emerged from one of the following disciplines: art history, philosophy, literary studies.

Propaganda Sektor Perkhidmatan Awam di Persekutuan Tanah Melayu melalui Malayan Film Unit (MFU), 1957–1963

This research aimed to investigate the extent of the roles played by the Malayan Film Unit (MFU) as a propaganda platform for the civil service sector by the federal government from 1957 until 1963. The government had indeed been using MFU as a platform to promote the roles and to attract the support of the citizens towards the civil service sector in the Federation of Malaya. Various films had been produced based on the selected themes in the civil service sector. Moreover, the films had been played at the cinemas and mobile cinematic shows (locally called wayang pacak) in the whole of the Federation of Malaya along the specified period. This research was qualitative in nature and completely employed the historic research methodology. The materials and resources were obtained from the National Archives Malaysia, National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS), National Library of Malaysia, libraries at the local higher learning institutions nationwide, and others. The findings showed that MFU played it significant roles as a propaganda tool in the efforts by the federal government to promote the roles and to attract the support from the citizens towards the activities of civil services in the Federation of Malaya. In fact, MFU was seen as the earliest platform used by the government for the earlier-mentioned purpose, which was then further enhanced after the formation of Malaysia and establishment of Malaysian National Film Department in 1963.

Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s experiment in film pedagogy

ABSTRACT This article examines a little-known experiment in film pedagogy by Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, before the beginning of the German-Soviet war (1941–1945, called ‘Great Patriotic War’ in the Soviet Union), in addition to shooting his own films, Dovzhenko attempted to organise and conduct comprehensive training of film production personnel directly on site, at the Kyiv Film Factory (Kyiv Film Studio of Feature Films, now Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Studio of Feature Films). In the Soviet Union of the 1930s, the Party administrative apparatus strictly controlled not only the filming and distribution of films, but also the training of future personnel for film production: film directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, film actors, etc. Dovzhenko’s experiment in film pedagogy made a distinct contribution to nurturing Ukrainian actors for sound-era cinema, fluent in Ukrainian and immersed in Ukrainian culture, despite the wider context of Soviet repression, especially in Ukraine. The article uses sources from a number of archives in Ukraine and Russia, memoirs and rare period publications to reconstruct this episode in Dovzhenko’s career and grant an insight into his pedagogical practice and approach to film acting.

Biopics and the Reverse Engineering of Populism in Recent Hungarian Cinema

This article explores the recent transformation of Hungarian cinema focusing on the increased number of historical films since 2020. The upsurge in historical themed productions featuring historical or otherwise popular figures could not have happened without either the infrastructural developments triggered by international runaway pro­­ductions or the generous financial support of the National Film Fund, the central funding body of cinema. More recent historical representations have openly adopted populist and illiberal narratives of national pride, patriotism, and exceptionalism. Exploring the new politics of biopics in specific and historical films in general, the article adopts the notion of reverse engineering as both a stylistic practice and a means of recruiting historical figures to fight the political and cultural battles of populism. The article captures the changing framework of representing history with reference to The Whiskey Bandit, Bet on Revenge, Blockade, and Hadik and through analysing closely the construction of their protagonists. Analysing strategies of making historical characters appealing for contemporary audiences, the latter group of films are described as hyper-politicised historical imageries that transfer Christian, nativist, and anti-elitist agendas dominating the right-wing populist echo chamber into the story-worlds of biopics.

Mykola Shpykovskyi and the visual style of late VUFKU films

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on an editing strategy repeatedly found in Mykola Shpykovskyi’s films The Self-Seeker (Shkurnyk, 1929) and Bread (Khlib, 1929) that relies on limited camera set-ups and axial cutting. The aim of this analysis is to situate these films and Shpykovskyi in relationship to the stylistic influence of late silent-era films both within the Soviet Union and across Western Europe – a consideration of how Soviet montage aesthetics were appropriated in Soviet films overall. The intention is to begin making a case for how late silent Ukrainian cinema can be considered a national cinema – distinctive not only in terms of its content and themes but also by virtue of its stylistic norms.

Regional film in the dynamics of the national film industry

Background: In the last ten years, the Indonesian film industry has experienced significant growth. The national film industry and the regional film industry, one of which is indie films produced in the city of Makassar. The development of films in Makassar began to receive national public attention with the explosion of the film Uang Panai in 2016. Also, in 2017, the success of the movie Silariang received an audience of 183.340 people. Purpose: Examining the impact of Makassar-produced films on the dynamics of Indonesia's domestic film industry is the main objective of this study, including examining its impact on cultural identity, economic variables, and its role in enhancing the uniqueness of national film. Methods: This study employs a qualitative methodology and gathers data through content analysis, observation, and interviews. Results: According to the study's findings, regional films—like those made in Makassar—are essential to the growth and advancement of the country's film industry. This demonstrates how crucial it is to acknowledge and encourage filmmaking outside of the major industrial hubs. Conclusion: Research shows that regional films have the potential to positively impact economic growth, especially in the regions where they are produced. It encourages the creative economy, creates local employment opportunities, and offers direct and indirect financial benefits. Implications: There is a need to recognize and promote regional films to encourage the diversity of Indonesian films; this study is also expected to provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between regional films and the dynamics of Indonesian films.

The Earth in the Land: Internationalism, Regional Culturalism, and Cosmopolitanism in 1960s Films from Soviet Ukraine

Abstract In the film history of the Ukrainian ssr, the Thaw is regarded as the era of the rebirth of a national Ukrainian cinema. Both films celebrating regional diversity and films merely drawing on local crews and infrastructure are said to have contributed to a national film culture. I look at three distinct approaches to the Soviet concept of multinationality to show that the rebirth of a national cinema was characterized by approaches that did not claim a distinct national identity for Ukraine. Instead, directors facing regional diversity either transcended Ukraine’s cultural environment (through internationalism), undercut it (through what I call regional culturalism), or ignored it altogether (through cosmopolitanism). With the help of this typology, I point to the complex cultural politics of the time. The Soviet Ukrainian films I discuss exemplarily were not part of a common national project at the time, though they may have contributed to it as time passed.

Political backlash and consumer boycotts: Evidence from the NFB relocation and movie demand in Canada

AbstractIn this paper, we investigate the impact of the announcement in 1952 of a change in Canadian cultural policy, namely the reorganization of the National Film Board (NFB) and the move of its headquarters from Ottawa to Montréal, on movie demand. Using weekly box office revenue data for a subsample of movie theatres in Toronto and Montréal from 1945 to 1955, we estimate the impact of this policy change with a triple difference estimator and find that the NFB headquarters move in Canada was followed by a decrease in movie attendance for movies produced in anglophone countries and an increase in movie attendance for French movies in Montréal. We complement our analysis with Odesi public poll Canadian data from 1949 to 1959 and find that poll respondents from Quebec held a more negative opinion about the decisions of the Canadian government and the tide of Americanization, relative to respondents elsewhere, and that their opinion deteriorated further after the relocation announcement and the relocation itself took place. This finding is consistent with our hypothesis that the relocation of NFB headquarters caused political backlash and triggered a boycott against anglophone, especially American, movies in Quebec.

1950~60년대 문화영화 애니메이션 연구

This paper argues for the need to re-catalog animations in cultural films produced by the National Film Production Center, which are fading into the mists of Korean film history. Given the center’s obligation to promote national policies, it is essential not only to specify when these cultural films were made but also to accurately identify the artists involved in the animations. However, the basic information varies among institutions that introduce these cultural films. First, the role of short animations produced by the National Film Production Center from the 1950s to the 1980s is examined in this paper, with their inception and decline being analyzed through articles published in each era. This paper argues that the first cultural film animation should be identified not as “Cartoon of Killing Rats” (September 1959), but as “Acacia Tree Growing in Korea” (April 1959). Moreover, the migration of animators from the National Film Production Center to private film companies and the government’s dismissive attitude towards cartoons are cited as reasons for the decline. Finally, the relationship between the animations in cultural films and contemporary short animations featured in Daehan News (Korean News) is explored. This paper advocates to expand the research horizons of the cultural films.

Approaching a National Film History through Data. Network Analysis in German Film History

The present paper is an attempt at importing network analysis as a method and applying it to a field that has hitherto been examined in different ways: the study of national cinema. The approach was motivated by the perceived conundrum in the existing studies of German cinema that filmhistorical and political history usually do not match. The aim is to open up another perspective on the problem of periodization by looking at the data of film production, more specifically of collaboration. By using a comprehensive data set which is made availavable by the Filmportal, the central internet platform on German film, the approach in this paper is to look at the key creatives involved in the production of a film in the period from 1919 to 1939 and to conceptualize collaboration and connectivity in a (national) film culture through the use of network research methods.

Integration and Industrialization of Film and Television Resources and its Significance for China’s Film and Television Work

The abundance of Film and Television resources in China is notable, yet the effective amalgamation and industrialization of these resources hold immense importance for the nation's film and television endeavors. Utilizing the full potential of policy, market, talent, and cultural assets, this research achieves the industrialization of Film and Television resources via a comprehensive amalgamation and integration of various capital, cooperation, and industry sectors. The findings of our study indicate that merging and mechanizing Film and Television resources in the realm of film and TV not only enhances their usage efficiency and financial worth, but also elevates their quality and expressive capacity. Consequently, this approach enables efficient education in Film and Television for the film and television sector in China. The research aids in comprehending the significance of incorporating Film and Television resource industrialization into film and TV projects, and also serves as a valuable methodological guide for diverse film and TV endeavors via these resources.

Film Industry at the Service of EU Identity Politics

Mass cinema can act as a powerful tool for influencing public opinion by appealing to shared values and collective historical memory, while simultaneously constructing and guiding these elements in alignment with policy objectives. This article explores the thesis that national cinema, as an element of a common cultural code, plays a significant role in the formation and reinforcement of collective (socio-cultural) identity. Specifically, it examines the significance of Brussels' efforts to cultivate a robust film industry as part of the European Union's strategy for constructing a collective identity.The authors test the hypothesis that cinema serves as a medium for fostering a sense of belonging and emotional connection among EU citizens. To this end, the study aims to uncover the specific mechanisms by which common historical and social narratives are conveyed through European Union cinema. The research methodology is grounded in a structuralist perspective on cinema (P. Wallen, C. Metz).The article analyzes how the EU has intensified its institutional support and promotion of European cinema, particularly in response to the «crisis of ideas» in Hollywood, which has left a void in the global film market. This analysis is contextualized within the broader sociopolitical landscape, including the rising popularity of mass cinema during the pandemic and the heightened urgency for strengthening EU collective identity amid the Ukrainian crisis and the initiation of a special military operation.The findings indicate that the EU is increasingly leveraging the film industry to disseminate narratives, ideas, and values critical for both situational objectives – such as consolidating public opinion on specific political issues (illustrated by the «militarization» of the film market in response to the 2022 military operation) – and long-term goals of fortifying the EU's collective identity. However, the long-term efficacy of cinema in shaping public opinion is constrained by its susceptibility to rapid trend shifts driven by audience preferences.

Class Bias in Indonesian’s Post-Reformation Film Revival

This paper describes how the Indonesian film industry has experienced a revival to counter Hollywood dominance since the beginning of the Reformation Era in the 2000s. However, conditions that hinder the growth of the Indonesian film industry are mainly due to the concentration of movie theatres and film screens in big cities. Indonesian films are predominantly consumed by groups from the upper socioeconomic levels and ignored by the middle and lower economic strata. This article seeks to portray whether the movement against Hollywood dominance would be effective if Indonesian films were only directed at this particular audience segment. To analyse the development of the Indonesian film industry in the post-reformation era (2000-current), the authors used a nationwide survey from Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting, conducted from August 31 to September 9, 2019, shortly before the COVID-19 Pandemic hit globally. To corroborate the survey's findings, the authors also distributed a closed questionnaire to 100 students at Undergraduate Program in Communication, Universitas Indonesia, and followed this with in-depth interviews with several students. The authors seek to study the revival of Indonesian films despite the decade-long dominance of Hollywood films and, recently, South Korean films. The research question proposed in this paper is: Can Indonesia break away from Hollywood's dominance? For this reason, this research focuses on the availability and modality of Indonesian market-targeted millennial and post-millennial film audiences to support the revival of the national film industry to compete with the dominance of Hollywood films. Keywords: Class bias, Indonesian films’ revival, taste culture, movie theaters, Hollywood films.

Audiovisual Accessibility in Peruvian Cinema: an Analysis of Subtitling for the Deaf in a National Film

Research Implications: Accessible subtitling enables individuals with hearing impairments to access audiovisual content. Practically, subtitlers should not only identify and categorize characters in the audiovisual product but also include crucial information about sound effects to ensure comprehensive understanding. Theoretically, this study lays the groundwork for further exploration into factors such as age and the degree of hearing impairment.