Preliminary Programme

Developed in the 1980s by Michael Storper, Susan Christopherson, Allen J. Scott and others, ‘flexible specialisation’ (FS), as a conceptual framework, has exerted a powerful influence over how we understand Hollywood’s motion picture industry. Drawing upon the ideas developed by Piore and Sabel, the flexible specialisations school sees an industrial divide separating the golden age of Hollywood from more recent developments since the 1980s. This divide is represented by a series of Fordist/Post Fordist binaries: mass production/flexible specialisation, vertical integration/vertical disintegration, oligopoly/competitive small firms, corporate/family run, semi skilled/craft, and sub-sub-divided labour/recomposed work. Supporters of FS claim to detect a new form of productive organisation, one that offers the potential to liberate workers in the Los Angeles industry. Such optimism stands in marked contrast to the pessimistic vision of some of the critics of FS who predict a degraded, ‘globalised’ workforce as ‘runaway production’ gathers pace.

Critics and supporters recognise the intellectual ambition of FS in attempting to explain recent industrial history. Nevertheless, this paper argues that the insertion of a spurious industrial divide located in the 1980s not only distorts our understanding of recent developments but the whole of the industry’s history since the 1920s, especially the work experience of those in motion pictures.

This paper suggests that in order to grasp the wider political aspirations of FS we need to understand the moment of the school’s creation in the debates surrounding the deregulation of American industry in the Reagan era, but also in the political and cultural milieu of 1980s Los Angeles. (Show less)

In what follows I will discuss some effects on the 'creative classes' in Sweden and Scandinavia due to developments during roughly the last decade. In this period, a majority of the feature film making but also some documentary and TV-production has moved away from Stockholm, the capital, to newly established, regional production centres. A similar process has been going on for a while in other parts of Europe and in Scandinavia, a fact which makes the phenomenon more than merely of national interest.

One evident reason for this change is that the government, but perhaps even more so, regional authorities look to the 'creative industries' to regenerate regional and local economies that have descended into what may be termed a 'post-industrial slump'. The aim, in turn, is that eventually, self-supporting, thriving audiovisual clusters will replace former industries and the public sector as a source of employment and wealth. Another expectation is that this new endeavour will expose these regions in a favourable way as, in Richard Florida's expression, 'creative cities'
and accordingly attract tourism and so forth.

In a way, this regime has been profitable for the film sector. Since film is not confined to the cultural sector anymore, but instead regarded as an important tool for regional structural transformation, new public funding has become available. This has meant that more films are being made and that new talent has been given opportunities.

However, individually these films do not appear to be more attractive to audiences than those made before the present relative production boom. Accordingly, the unfortunate - but in Europe characteristic – progress towards the prevalence of small independent production companies marked by their low level of capitalisation, together with the elimination of the few older and larger, integrated players is continuing.

Seen from the perspective of film workers, this means that the size of the profession has grown. Due to the structural situation, however, most work is temporary and the opportunities for employment are limited. Thus, most act as freelancers and of those only 25 per cent receives 75 per cent or more of their income from actual film work. This may be among several factors that explain why few film workers, according to a recent survey, move to the regional centres. Consequently, some of the expected benefits of these 'clusters' are lost. In this paper I will discuss some possible economic, social and industrial motives for this state but also consider this phenomenon of 'cultural interventionism' more generally. (Show less)

For the relatively small number of performers who won a place in the cinematic firmament in the 1920s, conditions of employment were, on the face of it, far from onerous. Even so, the silent era was punctuated by bitter and often very public power struggles that arose out of the efforts of star performers to challenge producers and studio managers for control over the terms of their commodification. Film theorist Barry King has argued that stardom allows individual actors and actresses to carve out what he terms a “manoeuvrable space” in their relationships with their employers. In practice, however, the majority of stars during the studio era had only limited room for manoeuvre. With unlimited access to the national media, industry leaders could construct screen luminaries in such a way as to strip them of their identity as workers and to obscure the realities of the conditions under which they laboured. By the late teens, a discourse of screen acting had emerged in the United States that detached stars from the world of work and defined stardom almost exclusively in terms of the rewards that accrued to it. Performers who complained about the terms of their employment or who sought a role in the construction of their screen images found themselves characterized as temperamental egotists whose professional idiosyncrasies posed a threat to the smooth operation of the Hollywood “dream factory”. This paper will focus on the experience of Jetta Goudal, a screen star of the early 1920s, whose efforts to assert her right to have a say in how her star image was constructed brought her into conflict with the studios and led eventually to her blacklisting. (Show less)

The film industry in Nigeria has attracted a lot of attention in the last few years due to the phenomenal growth which it has undergone. Prior to this period, given the economic decline in the country, film production had practically died out. Yet Nigeria is now credited with being the third largest producer of films after Hollywood and Bollywood. The films produced in Nigeria are low budget films made in video format and are produced at the rate of about 1,000 a year.
Nevertheless, this film industry reputedly generates millions of jobs annually and is said to have a turnover of billions of dollars. Thus, it is generally recognised that the Nigerian film industry is a viable one. However, the industry has grown, and so far remained, largely in the informal sector. The financial institutions, notably the banks, have been slow to invest in the industry because of the absence of a formal infrastructure.
The industry has created thousands of new jobs, and has succeeded in changing the traditional perception of acting and actors within Nigeria (Onishi, 2002). This has led to the growth of a new celebrity/fashion industry which inundates the public with the doings of the stars of the screen. “The economic fortunes of the Nollywood industry have also helped to create a new type of power base for successful artists” (Eghagha, 2007). However, the behind-the-camera workers remain locked out of this power base. This group suffers from the lack of a formal infrastructure in the industry in that they are to a large extent unprotected from exploitation. However, various guilds have sprung up in connection with the Nigerian film industry with the aim of protecting the interests of the various groups involved. (Show less)

Since 1996, Kinshasa’s mediascape has witnessed a significant transformation. In that year, President Mobutu ordained a freedom of press, which led many wealthy individuals (politicians, entrepreneurs and Christian leaders) to set up their own television channels. With the proliferation of TV stations, the production of local television drama increased. Totally in line with the charismatization of Kinshasa’s society, the post-Mobutu teleserials are immersed within the ideology of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity. The most popular television serials are those that visualize a spiritual battle between God and the Devil. Many of Kinshasa’s drama groups are also affiliated with charismatic churches. This not only influences the storylines, but it also shapes the social organization of the TV acting groups.
The analysis will focus on the diverging forms of patronage and clientelism that are at play among (1) the actors and between actors, (2) the drama group and the heads of television channels, (3) the dramatic artists and the pastors, and (4) the actors and the powerful (“Big Men”) in Kinshasa.
It will be argued that Kinshasa’s dramatic artists occupy diverging positions within the patron-client axis, which offer them not only power and authority, but which allow these professional artists to earn a livelihood. Media celebrity thus bears an economic significance in Kinshasa’s precarious society.
The material for the research was gathered during field work with Kinshasa’s most popular drama group (17 months between 2003 and 2006). Field work included interviews with Kinshasa’s dramatic artists and observation and participation during religious events, the actual filming of the teleserials, and the interaction between television actors and their audiences in talk shows and beyond the studio. (Show less)

It is generally accepted that the last quarter-century has seen a vast change in the gender balance of those working in the cinema industry, in France as elsewhere. Especially in the high-profile field of directing, a new generation of talented young women entering the profession in the 1990s and 2000s established their presence with such assurance that it is hardly a matter worth remarking on any longer. Given the traditional emphasis on the ‘auteur’ as the figure of prime importance in French film-making, and the speed with which the extremely wide gender gap associated with the role was closed, it is perhaps understandable that rising numbers of women directors might be mistaken for a general feminisation of the industry. The pattern, however, has not been replicated to the same extent in all sectors. While in some areas of the film-making process, for example editing and design, women have always had a strong presence, others have been very firmly perceived as a male preserve, and none more so than cinematography. Although Agnès Godard, one of the best-known female DPs in the country, told the review Positif in 2000 that she thought the French industry exceptionally ready to accept a woman in the role, it is noticeable that in 2009 the AFC (Association française des directeurs de la photographie cinématographique), the prestigious professional body, counts only 10 women among its 107 members; and this despite relatively large numbers of aspirant female camera-operators working at assistant level on film projects.
This paper will look at the accounts of their experience given by those women who have successfully established themselves as cinematographers since 1975 (the year Nurit Aviv became the first woman to be officially recognised as a DP), in an attempt to account for this continuing discrepancy, and to explore the ways in which the problems and the opportunities of the cinematographer’s work have been read by those most directly involved. It will also ask whether the developing profile of the French cinema is likely to change the outlook for women aspiring to make a career behind the camera. Its conclusions will of course be only provisional, and I hope that a panel discussion may offer the chance to compare them with others’ experience. (Show less)

Hindi popular cinema has long been a source of inspiration for clothing, hair and makeup styles among Indian men and women in the middle to upper classes. Recent explosive growth in the consumer economy, introducing new fashion commodities and beauty services, has affected both what films show, and what film viewers want. Ethnographic research among make-up artists and hairdressers in the Mumbai industry reveals the unfolding relationship between screen images, behind-the-scenes practice, and shifting identities and aesthetic preferences of make-up and beauty practitioners. As the fashion industry develops closer ties with the film industry through film star endorsements, product placement, joint marketing campaigns and so forth, so it is co- opting more and more of the conventional practice arenas of professional film workers in areas of make-up and hair. Make-up artists and hairdressers must compete with a new set of non-film practitioners as the work of preparing the star for the camera shifts from the studio to the salon, the plastic surgeon and the gym. Film workers must continue to assert their claims to knowledge about new products and services, and the validity of their own distinct practice, or find ways in which they too can participate in the fashion as well as film worlds. The chasm that is opening up between established and new practices is shown most clearly in the differences between celebrity make-up artists and hairdressers, and their production company equivalents, differences that figured in recent industrial action in Bollywood to claim better wages and conditions for ordinary film workers. Managing how stars look on and offscreen has practical and rhetorical consequences for who gets to work in the industry, and what terms. (Show less)