Casco Bay Weekly : 23 November 1988

https://digitalcommons.portlandlibrary.com/cbw_1988/1029/thumbnail.jp

Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom: Decades of Decline, 1945–65

Cinema-going was the most popular commercial leisure activity in the first half of the twentieth century, peaking in 1946 with 1.6 billion recorded admissions. Though ‘going to the pictures’ remained a popular pastime, the transition to peacetime altered citizens’ leisure habits. During the 1950s increased affluence, the growth of television ownership and the diversification of leisure led to rapid declines in attendance. Cinema attendances fell in all regions, but the speed, nature and extent of decline varied widely across the United Kingdom. By linking national developments to detailed case studies of Belfast and Sheffield, this book adds nuance to our understanding of regional variations in film exhibition, audience habits and cinema-going experiences during a period of profound social and cultural change. Drawing on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative sources, Cinema and Cinema-Going conveys the diverse nature of this important industry, and the significance of place as a determinant of film attendance in post-war Britain

Examining the validity and utility of two secondary sources of food environment data against street audits in England

Background: Secondary data containing the locations of food outlets is increasingly used in nutrition and obesity research and policy. However, evidence evaluating these data is limited. This study validates two sources of secondary food environment data: Ordnance Survey Points of Interest data (POI) and food hygiene data from the Food Standards Agency (FSA), against street audits in England and appraises the utility of these data. Methods: Audits were conducted across 52 Lower Super Output Areas in England. All streets within each Lower Super Output Area were covered to identify the name and street address of all food outlets therein. Audit-identified outlets were matched to outlets in the POI and FSA data to identify true positives (TP: outlets in both the audits and the POI/FSA data), false positives (FP: outlets in the POI/FSA data only) and false negatives (FN: outlets in the audits only). Agreement was assessed using positive predictive values (PPV: TP/(TP+FP)) and sensitivities (TP/(TP+FN)). Variations in sensitivities and PPVs across environment and outlet types were assessed using multi-level logistic regression. Proprietary classifications within the POI data were additionally used to classify outlets, and agreement between audit-derived and POI-derived classifications was assessed. Results: Street audits identified 1172 outlets, compared to 1100 and 1082 for POI and FSA respectively. PPVs were statistically significantly higher for FSA (0.91, CI: 0.89-0.93) than for POI (0.86, CI: 0.84-0.88). However, sensitivity values were not different between the two datasets. Sensitivity and PPVs varied across outlet types for both datasets. Without accounting for this, POI had statistically significantly better PPVs in rural and affluent areas. After accounting for variability across outlet types, FSA had statistically significantly better sensitivity in rural areas and worse sensitivity in rural middle affluence areas (relative to deprived). Audit-derived and POI-derived classifications exhibited substantial agreement (p < 0.001; Kappa = 0.66, CI: 0.63 - 0.70). Conclusions: POI and FSA data have good agreement with street audits; although both datasets had geographic biases which may need to be accounted for in analyses. Use of POI proprietary classifications is an accurate method for classifying outlets, providing time savings compared to manual classification of outlets

An Account of Championing Food for Vulnerable Households and Hungry Children in Aotearoa New Zealand

Global food security became the focus of policy and media attention worldwide following the 2006-2008 food price spikes. In 2013, food security issues in Aotearoa New Zealand relate to access to food, ability to access food, food supply, food distribution and income poverty. I ponder issues of food (in)security and access(ability) to food for vulnerable households and hungry children; and debate the universal benefit to be achieved from various food initiatives. My surveillance of these issues includes consideration of ways people and planet are disadvantaged by, and within, food systems as they are currently determined. Deprivation of secure access to nutritious food, diversely explained, justified and challenged elsewhere in practice and in literature, is a reality for many families in Aotearoa New Zealand. Current remedies, here as elsewhere, seem not to be making a radical impact. Advocacy for an approach to organisational research filled with words, imagery and rich descriptions by leading contemporary critical theorists Alvesson & Gabriel (2013) emboldens my intention to creatively engage in what I consider to be a meaningful and socially relevant story about championing food for vulnerable households and hungry children in Aotearoa New Zealand. Aspirations to a society with well-fed children, secure family life, and healthy populations are my focus in this research. In a creative engagement I seek to persuade and argue, to address and debate, “to analyse and to make conscious such naturalized ‘common-sense’ patterns of domination” (Schüssler Fiorenza, 2001, p. 102). Considering the vast array of systems and organisational arrangements that together constitute the production, distribution and consumption of food, I have craft three theoretical conceptualisations to organise my thoughts. They are: 1. those already ‘determined’ notions which follow existing dominant neo-liberal systems, forms, and mind-sets; 2. those ‘improved determined’ ideas considered as alternative approaches to existing ‘determined’ ones but that involve some intention to achieve positive adaptation to a ‘determined’ configuration; and 3. those ‘indeterminate’ perspectives where alternative initiatives or propositions could be considered but outcomes are unknown or yet to be determined. Through these three conceptualisations, I illuminate the many ways vulnerable individuals and households are disadvantaged through and by current ‘determined’ systems, forms and mind-sets. I argue increasing corporate control over global food production and distribution is evident. I address academic debates around food context and I question the veracity and efficacy of food assistance programs and systems as a remedy for hunger. Specifically in Aotearoa New Zealand I deliberate on the impression being left by the elephants in the paddocks, the giant corporates whose footprints can be followed well beyond the farm gate. The extent to which any social researcher can contribute to transformative change while unintentionally participating in a system that dominates, marginalises or oppresses is a contemporary challenge for all activists with critical intent. In this thesis I have characterised stories of domination or marginalisation within food systems and given a space for these stories of the positioning of the vulnerable to be told

Screening Europe in Australasia

Through a detailed study of the circulation of European silent film in Australasia in the early twentieth century, this book challenges the historical myopia that treats Hollywood films as having always dominated global film culture. Before World War I, European silent feature films were ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand, teaching Antipodean audiences about Continental cultures and familiarizing them with glamorous European stars, from Asta Nielsen to Emil Jannings. After the rise of Hollywood and then the shift to sound film, this history—and its implications for cross-cultural exchange—was lost. Julie K. Allen recovers that history, with its flamboyant participants, transnational currents, innovative genres, and geopolitical complications, bringing it all vividly to life. Making ground-breaking use of digitized Australian and New Zealand newspapers, the author reconstructs the distribution and exhibition of European silent films in the Antipodes, along the way incorporating compelling biographical sketches of the ambitious pioneers of the Australasian cinema industry. She reveals the complexity and competitiveness of the early cinema market, in a region with high consumer demand and low domestic production, and frames the dramatic shift to almost exclusively American cinema programming during World War I, contextualizing the rise of the art film in the 1920s in competition with mainstream Hollywood productions

Ephemeral Cinema Spaces

With changing technologies and social habits, the communal cinema experience would seem to be a legacy from another era. However, the last decade has seen a surge in interest for screening films in other, temporary public settings. This desire to turn pubs, galleries, parks, and even boats, into temporary cinema spaces is moved not only by a love for movies, but also a search for ways of being and working together. This book documents current practices of pop-up and site-specific cinema exhibition in the UK (with a focus on Scotland), tracing their links with historical forms of non-theatrical exhibition such as public hall cinema and fairground bioscopes. Through archival research, observation and interviews, the project asks how exhibitors create ephemeral social spaces, and how the combination of film and venue reinvents cinema as device and as social practice

Screening Europe in Australasia

Through a detailed study of the circulation of European silent film in Australasia in the early twentieth century, this book challenges the historical myopia that treats Hollywood films as having always dominated global film culture. Before World War I, European silent feature films were ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand, teaching Antipodean audiences about Continental cultures and familiarizing them with glamorous European stars, from Asta Nielsen to Emil Jannings. After the rise of Hollywood and then the shift to sound film, this history—and its implications for cross-cultural exchange—was lost. Julie K. Allen recovers that history, with its flamboyant participants, transnational currents, innovative genres, and geopolitical complications, bringing it all vividly to life. Making ground-breaking use of digitized Australian and New Zealand newspapers, the author reconstructs the distribution and exhibition of European silent films in the Antipodes, along the way incorporating compelling biographical sketches of the ambitious pioneers of the Australasian cinema industry. She reveals the complexity and competitiveness of the early cinema market, in a region with high consumer demand and low domestic production, and frames the dramatic shift to almost exclusively American cinema programming during World War I, contextualizing the rise of the art film in the 1920s in competition with mainstream Hollywood productions

Jean Desmet and the Early Dutch Film Trade

Since 1957 the Film Museum in Amsterdam has been in possession of the Desmet Collection which contains the estate of the Dutch cinema owner and film distributor Jean Desmet (1875-1956). The collection comprises almost nine hundred European and American films in all genres, a collection of publicity material and a dauntingly large business archive. These three sources form the basis of this first comprehensive reconstruction of Desmet's career: from his nomadic beginnings as a traveling showman, working the seasonal fairgrounds of the Netherlands and Belgium, to his successful switch to permanent cinema operation and film distribution. The history of Desmet's career offers not simply an abstract of an individual character and his personal ambitions and motivations, but also epitomizes transformations in the world of cinema as an industry. Between 1907 and 1916 the world of cinema experienced radical structural change which Desmet not only witnessed but also helped to bring about. Given the insufficiencies of Dutch film production, Desmet became a link between film production abroad and film exhibition in the Netherlands. Desmet is not merely representative of the rise of the permanent movie house and the coming of the film distributor. This book shows how his fortunes also encapsulate a series of structural changes within the new culture of permanent cinema and film distribution. In film distribution these changes embraced the introduction of film rental, the advent of the long feature film, the introduction of the monopoly distribution system and the periodic transformation of the products on offer. In the business of cinema operation change involved specialization, the creation of fixed theater venues, the development of a theater hierarchy, expansions of scale, the introduction of trade journals and the gradual legitimization of cinema as a popular cultural institution. These transformations were not confined to the Netherlands but were also taking place in the rest of Europe. Indeed, they were first set in motion by other European countries, and in order fully to understand Desmet it is necessary to situate him in his larger European context. In this original and wide-ranging study Ivo Blom uses the career of Jean Desmet as a means of exploring the history of cinema from the ground-level position of film distribution and exhibition. His copiously illustrated and scrupulously documented exposition swells into an epic narrative that offers a richer, more rounded -indeed 'truer' - account of early urban cinema culture than is possible from the confined perspective of production-based film histories.De levensloop van de Nederlandse bioscoopeigenaar en filmdistributeur Jean Desmet (1875-1956) biedt niet alleen inzicht in een excentrieke persoonlijkheid, maar staat ook model voor de veranderingen in de filmwereld als geheel. Door buitenlandse filmproducties voor vertoning naar Nederland te brengen leverde Desmet een substantiële bijdrage aan de radicale veranderingen die tussen 1907 en 1916 plaatsvonden in de filmindustrie. Het Filmmuseum in Amsterdam is sinds 1957 in het bezit van de Desmet-verzameling waarin de nalatenschap van deze excentrieke filmliefhebber bewaard is gebleven. Dit materiaal vormde het uitgangspunt van deze originele studie waarin Ivo Blom aan de hand van Desmet's levensverhaal de geschiedenis van de filmdistributie en -vertoning vertelt. Zijn rijk geïllustreerde en grondig gedocumenteerde uiteenzetting is uitgegroeid tot een episch verhaal dat - meer dan een productie-georienteerde geschiedenis - een rijk en afgerond beeld schetst van de vroege stadse filmcultuur

Jean Desmet and the early Dutch film trade

Since 1957 the Film Museum in Amsterdam has been in possession of the Desmet Collection which contains the estate of the Dutch cinema owner and film distributor Jean Desmet (1875-1956). The collection comprises almost nine hundred European and American films in all genres, a collection of publicity material and a dauntingly large business archive. These three sources form the basis of this first comprehensive reconstruction of Desmet's career: from his nomadic beginnings as a traveling showman, working the seasonal fairgrounds of the Netherlands and Belgium, to his successful switch to permanent cinema operation and film distribution. The history of Desmet's career offers not simply an abstract of an individual character and his personal ambitions and motivations, but also epitomizes transformations in the world of cinema as an industry. Between 1907 and 1916 the world of cinema experienced radical structural change which Desmet not only witnessed but also helped to bring about. Given the insufficiencies of Dutch film production, Desmet became a link between film production abroad and film exhibition in the Netherlands. Desmet is not merely representative of the rise of the permanent movie house and the coming of the film distributor. This book shows how his fortunes also encapsulate a series of structural changes within the new culture of permanent cinema and film distribution. In film distribution these changes embraced the introduction of film rental, the advent of the long feature film, the introduction of the monopoly distribution system and the periodic transformation of the products on offer. In the business of cinema operation change involved specialization, the creation of fixed theater venues, the development of a theater hierarchy, expansions of scale, the introduction of trade journals and the gradual legitimization of cinema as a popular cultural institution. These transformations were not confined to the Netherlands but were also taking place in the rest of Europe. Indeed, they were first set in motion by other European countries, and in order fully to understand Desmet it is necessary to situate him in his larger European context. In this original and wide-ranging study Ivo Blom uses the career of Jean Desmet as a means of exploring the history of cinema from the ground-level position of film distribution and exhibition. His copiously illustrated and scrupulously documented exposition swells into an epic narrative that offers a richer, more rounded -indeed 'truer' - account of early urban cinema culture than is possible from the confined perspective of production-based film histories

Casco Bay Weekly : 15 August 2002

https://digitalcommons.portlandlibrary.com/cbw_2002/1033/thumbnail.jp