Cinema, audiences and modernity: new perspectives on European cinema history

Abstract

Cinema, Audiences and Modernity is part of a ‘new cinema history’ movement within film and screen studies. This movement aims to look beyond the understanding of cinema’s history as concerned only with films and their production, and instead concentrate on the social experience of cinema. It has as its aim a rewriting of cinema history ‘from below’ – from the perspectives of its audiences. This collection sheds new light on the cinema and modernity debate by confronting established theories of the role of the modern cinematic experience with new empirical work on the social experience of cinemagoing, film audiences and film exhibition in Europe. The case studies also provide a ‘how to’ compendium of current methodologies for researchers and students working on film and media audiences, film and media experiences, and historical reception. The contributions to this book reflect on the very different ways in which cinema has been accepted, rejected or disciplined as an agent of modernity in neighbouring parts of Europe, and on how cinemagoing has been promoted and regulated as a popular social practice at different times in twentieth-century European history.

Full text

Cinema, Audiences and Modernity
The purpose of this book is to shed new light on the cinema and modernity debate by confronting
established theories on the role of the modern cinematic experience with new empirical work on the
history of the social experience of cinema-going, film audiences and film exhibition in Europe.
The book provides a wide range of research methodologies and perspectives on these matters,
including:
the use of oral history methods
questionnaires
diaries
audience letters
industrial, sociological and other accounts on historical film audiences.
The collection’s case studies thus provide a ‘how to’compendium of current methodologies for
researchers and students working on film and media audiences, film and media experiences, and histor-
ical reception.
The volume is part of a ‘new cinema history’movement within film and screen studies to look at
cinema history not only as a history of production, textual relations or movies-as-artefacts, but rather to
concentrate on the reception and social experience of cinema, and the engagement of film/cinema (his-
tory) ‘from below’. The contributions to the volume reflect on the very different ways in which cinema
has been accepted, rejected or disciplined as an agent of modernity in neighbouring parts of Europe, and
on how cinema-going has been promoted and regulated as a popular social practice at different times in
twentieth-century European history.
Daniel Biltereyst is Professor in Film and Media Studies at the Department of Communication Studies,
Ghent University, Belgium, where he leads the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS). His
research on film and screen culture as sites of controversy and censorship has been published in Cultural
Policy,European Journal of Cultural Studies,Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television,Journal of Commu-
nication Inquiry,Media, Culture & Society,Screen Studies in French Cinema,Studies in Russian and Soviet
Cinema.
Richard Maltby is Professor of Screen Studies and Deputy Executive Dean of the Faculty of Educa-
tion, Humanities, Law and Theology at Flinders University, South Australia. He is Series Editor of
Exeter Studies in Film History, the author of over 50 articles and essays, and the lead investigator on two
Australian Research Council Discovery projects examining the structure of the distribution and exhibition
industry and the history of cinema audiences in Australia.
Philippe Meers is Professor in Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies
at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His publications on popular media culture and film audiences
have appeared in Screen Media, Culture & Society,The Journal of Popular Film and Television,Iluminace and
other journals. He was the lead investigator on The ‘Enlightened’City-project on the history of film
exhibition and film culture in Flanders and Brussels (2005–8, with Daniel Biltereyst and Marnix Beyen).

Cinema, Audiences and
Modernity
New Perspectives on
European Cinema History
Edited by
Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby and
Philippe Meers

First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers, editorial and
selection matter; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Cinema audiences and modernity: an introduction / Daniel Biltereyst [editor].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Motion picture audiences: Europe: History: 20th century. 2. Motion picture
industry: Europe: History: 20th century. I. Biltereyst, Daniël, 1962-
PN1995.9.A8C57 2011
384’.8094: dc22
2011009219
ISBN: 978-0-415-67277-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-67278-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-80463-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents
List of figures and tables vii
Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
1. Cinema, audiences and modernity: an introduction 1
Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers
PART I
Cinema, Tradition and Community 17
2. Spaces of early film exhibition in Sweden: 1897–1911 19
Åsa Jernudd
3. Moviegoing under military occupation: Düsseldorf, 1919–25 35
Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk
4. ‘Christ is coming to the Elite Cinema’:film exhibition in the
Catholic South of the Netherlands, 1910s and 1920s 50
Thunnis Van Oort
5. Imagining modern Hungary through film: debates on national
identity, modernity and cinema in early twentieth-century
Hungary 64
Anna Manchin

6. The cinematic shapes of the socialist modernity programme:
ideological and economic parameters of cinema distribution in the
Czech Lands, 1948–70 81
Pavel Skopal
7. ‘The management committee intend to act as ushers’: cinema
operation and the South Wales Miners’Institutes in the 1950s
and 1960s 99
Stefan Moitra
PART II
Audiences, Modernity and Cultural Exchange 115
8. Urban legend: early cinema, modernization and urbanization
in Germany, 1895–1914 117
Annemone Ligensa
9. Diagnosis: ‘Flimmeritis’: female cinemagoing in Imperial
Germany, 1911–18 130
Andrea Haller
10. Afgrunden in Germany: monopolfilm, cinemagoing and the
emergence of the film star Asta Nielsen, 1910–11 142
Martin Loiperdinger
11. ‘Little Italy on the brink’: the Italian diaspora and the
distribution of war films in London, 1914–18 154
Pierluigi Ercole
12. Hollywood in disguise: practices of exhibition and reception
of foreign films in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s 166
Petr Szczepanik
13. Negotiating cinema’s modernity: strategies of control and
audience experiences of cinema in Belgium, 1930s–1960s 186
Daniel Biltereyst, Philippe Meers, Kathleen Lotze and
Lies Van de Vijver
Index 202
vi Contents