Defining a typology of cinemas across 1950s Europe

open access articleThis article presents a new typology of cinemas standardized across seven European cities Bari (Italy), Leicester (United Kingdom), Ghent (Belgium), Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Gothenburg (Sweden), Brno (Czechoslovakia) and Magdeburg (East Germany) and developed within the European Cinema Audiences (ECA) research project, through a cross-analysis of film exhibition and programming in the 1950s. Our contribution addresses the lack of a Europe-wide classification of cinema theatres in the period under scrutiny, which is necessary for any cross-national comparative analysis of the exhibition sector. The article is divided into three sections. In the first section it presents the methodology adopted by the project, aiming to replace missing ticket prices for cinema admission with a “price proxy”. This was used to determine cinema weightings and ranking. Our methodology expands on the limited criterion of seating capacity as the basis of classifying cinemas (Browning & Sorrell, 1952), by taking into account also exhibitors’ programming strategies. The second section illustrates a systematic classification of the types of cinemas across Europe according to the proposed new common characteristics. This section explains the different categories (elite, major, intermediate and minor cinemas) and demonstrates how they apply across our dataset, based on geography, the characteristics of the films screened (such as nationality, year, and genre), and the programming strategies for the Top 20 longest screening films in the respective case-study cities. The final section focuses on the discussion of case-study films emerging from the programming in the seven cities. On the one hand, it gives a better understanding of the hierarchy of the film exhibition structure in 1950s Europe, and, on the other hand, it explains how cinemas belonging to a specific category performed and operated in terms of programming not only within the local market in a given city, but also cross-nationally in the seven European cities. Hopefully the ECA cinema typology can be used and adapted to other geographical and cultural contexts

Challenges to Comparative Oral Histories of Cinema Audiences

open access articleThis article reflects on the challenges of comparative oral history analysis by taking the BA/Leverhulme-funded project Mapping European Cinema: a comparative project on cinema-going experiences in the 1950s (2016-2017) as a case study. The aim of MEC was to test new methodologies in order to explore and compare programming patterns and cinema-going experiences in European cities that were similar in terms of population and film exhibition structure but substantially different in terms of film culture. MEC focused on three case studies: Bari (Italy), Leicester (United Kingdom) and Ghent (Belgium). This article uses three video interviews to reflect on the theoretical framework around comparative analysis of film cultures, discuss issues of cultural specificity, and provide examples. Attempts at substantial comparative analysis of data have so far been unsuccessful because of the difficulty of analyzing different film cultures cross-nationally, the complexity of standardizing data, and the lack of analytical frames that could be used to explain patterns and differences revealed during the analysis. Building on the work of cultural historians studying the reciprocal traffic of culture across borders, the theoretical framework of the article tackles this complexity of working with memory across national and linguistic barriers and emphasizes contextualization as a defining component in cross-national comparative studies. Reflecting back on the initial choices made during the development of our MEC project, the article focusses on the selection of the cities and the methodological decisions developing the questions for the interviews, with examples concerning the importance of the geographical common tread and the impact of film memories. The article argues that the national specific knowledge of individual researchers enabled the authors not to overlook local perspectives while at the same time generalizing across the three national cultural contexts, identifying new perspectives, and finding a common ground that could be comparable to ensure a systematic comparative process

History of Cinemagoing: Archives and Projects Dossier. Introduction

The History of Cinemagoing: Archives and Projects Dossier which completes this issue of Alphaville devoted to new explorations in cinema, memory and the past is comprised of five essays which make use of memories of cinemagoing for diverse and distinctive projects

Defining a typology of cinemas across 1950s Europe

This article presents a new typology of cinemas standardized across seven European cities Bari (Italy), Leicester (United Kingdom), Ghent (Belgium), Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Gothenburg (Sweden), Brno (Czechoslovakia) and Magdeburg (East Germany) and developed within the European Cinema Audiences (ECA) research project, through a crossanalysis of film exhibition and programming in the 1950s. Our contribution addresses the lack of a Europe-wide classification of cinema theatres in the period under scrutiny, which is necessary for any cross-national comparative analysis of the exhibition sector. The article is divided into three sections. In the first section it presents the methodology adopted by the project, aiming to replace missing ticket prices for cinema admission with a “price proxy”. This was used to determine cinema weightings and ranking. Our methodology expands on the limited criterion of seating capacity as the basis of classifying cinemas (Browning & Sorrell, 1952), by taking into account also exhibitors’ programming strategies. The second section illustrates a systematic classification of the types of cinemas across Europe according to the proposed new common characteristics. This section explains the different categories (elite, major, intermediate and minor cinemas) and demonstrates how they apply across our dataset, based on geography, the characteristics of the films screened (such as nationality, year, and genre), and the programming strategies for the Top 20 longest screening films in the respective case-study cities. The final section focuses on the discussion of case-study films emerging from the programming in the seven cities. On the one hand, it gives a better understanding of the hierarchy of the film exhibition structure in 1950s Europe, and, on the other hand, it explains how cinemas belonging to a specific category performed and operated in terms of programming not only within the local market in a given city, but also cross-nationally in the seven European cities. Hopefully the ECA cinema typology can be used and adapted to other geographical and cultural contexts

Going to the exclusive show : exhibition strategies and moviegoing memories of Disneys animated feature films in Ghent (1937-1982)

This is a case study of the exploitation and experience of Disney's animated feature films from the 1930s to the 1980s in Ghent (Belgium). It is a historical study of programming practices and financial strategies which constructed childhood memories on watching Disney. The study is a contribution to a historical understanding of the implications of global distribution of film as cultural products and the counter pull of localism. Using a multi-method approach, the argument is made that the scarce screenings were strategically programmed to uplift the moviegoing experience into something out of the ordinary in everyday life. Programming and revenue data characterize the screenings as exclusive and generating high intakes. Consequently, the remembered screenings did not exhale an easy accessible social status nor an image of pervasiveness of popular childhood film, contradictory to conventional accounts of Disney's ubiquity in popular culture