From film policy to creative screen policies : media convergence and film policy trends in Flanders

In recent years, digitization processes and media convergence trends have changed the film industry in various ways. Scholars have indicated various alterations in the aesthetics, production, distribution, exhibition and reception of films, thereby pointing at new technological possibilities and challenges, an increasing participatory cinema culture, changes in the broader creative and economic strategies of film and media companies and an overall convergence between film and other media. The expansion of film industry activities from film to various other media has a long history. Media convergence trends, however, have recently intensified this expansion. In a European context, the role of film policy is particularly relevant in this respect, as film policy forms a crucial cornerstone for the organization of European film industries. By focusing on recent developments in Flanders (the northern, Dutch-language region in Belgium), this case study examines how, in tune with digitization and media convergence processes, government film policy in Europe has increasingly expanded its scope. More specifically, we analyse how film policy has evolved from a focus on the production of films into a more complex set of policy measures towards ‘creative screen media’ production. With this case study, we want to argue that contemporary film policy should be seen within the broader media environment and media policies, which are characterized by the growth of a conceptual and practical convergence between various (old and new) media, information and communication technologies and creative arts. This transition process is not ‘new’ as such, but has remarkably intensified since the turn of the millennium. Indeed, the evolution from film policy to broader creative screens policies runs parallel with and is connected to a more general shift in government policy (in Flanders and elsewhere), from a ‘cultural’ to a ‘creative’ industries policy paradigm

Comparative, entangled, parallel and ‘other’ cinema histories : another reflection on the comparative mode within New Cinema History

Comment on the theme issue

Understanding the hobbit: the cross-national and cross-linguistic reception of a global media product in Belgium, France and the Netherlands

The Hobbit franchise, as many global media products, reaches audiences worldwide. Audience members apparently consume a uniform media product. But do they? The World Hobbit Project offers a new and exciting opportunity to explore differences and similarities, for it provides us with audiences' understandings of the trilogy across languages and nationalities. In this paper we conduct a statistical analysis on differences and similarities in understandings of The Hobbit trilogy between Belgium, the Netherlands, and France – both in what audiences do and do not feel The Hobbit films to be. Analyzing this particular region in Europe provides an extraordinary opportunity, for The World Hobbit project allows us to compare on the language level (the Dutch and French-speaking Belgian regions with respectively the Netherlands and France), as well as on the level of national identities (comparing the three countries amongst each other). In doing so, we are able to further understand what informs geographical and linguistic differences in the consumption of a uniform media product. As such, this paper touches upon cultural hegemony, cross-border flows of fiction, language and cultural proximity

Nollywood online: between the individual consumption and the communal reception of Nigerian films among African diaspora

Various video-on-demand (VOD) platforms streaming Nigerian films have popped up on the Internet since 2011. These VOD platforms facilitate the consumption of Nigerian films among African diaspora. Despite an increasing academic interest for Nollywood audiences, these new modes of viewing Nigerian films online have yet to be explored. In this article, we will therefore give attention to the consumption and reception of Nigerian films on the Internet among African diaspora of Nigerian, Ghanaian and Cameroonian origin in the cities of Antwerp and Ghent, Belgium. In this study, we adopted a media ethnographic approach, including fieldwork and semi-structured in-depth interviews. Although scholars have suggested that the Internet fragments and individualizes film viewing, the results of this study show that indeed online Nigerian films are most often watched individually by the respondents, yet the reception of the films remains a social practice of shared meaning-making

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

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

Pick, play, produce : revisiting the concept of participation through a quantitative study of film consumption practices amongst youth in Flanders (Belgium)

This article proposes a framework that revisits the concept of participation through three non-mutually exclusive categories: pick, play and produce. Each category involves a different way of participating: through composing media consumption, to extending story worlds through existing materials and expanding media by creating content. In doing so, we question the emphasis on case studies that explore specific contemporary audience practices through the (online) traces left behind by audiences. These case studies are often set as exemplary for broader audience practices. Instead, we propose an approach that builds on the practices identified in these case studies, but starts from general audiences by surveying a representative sample of 1015 high school students aged 16 to 18 in Flanders (the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium). Each student completed a 94-question questionnaire in the first half of 2015, designed to measure contemporary film consumption. Our analysis confirms the need to further explore participation; when researching audience practices we find different patterns in participatory practices. A vast majority of audiences picks, about half of all audiences play and only a fifth participates through producing. Furthermore, audiences take part in different practices within and across categories. In short, participation is a multi-facetted concept

The Films of Ciro Guerra and the making of cosmopolitan spaces in Colombian cinema

This article proposes to use the concept of "cosmopolitan cinematic margins" to analyse the paradoxical meeting of the cosmopolitan meaning and discourses of Ciro Guerra's Colombian films and the spatial restrictions and immobility of the rural and remote places in which they are set. Such areas as seen on screen are usually interpreted by urban audiences as exotic locations, independently of their actual distance from cities. The article explores how films that, at first sight, show images of marginal and remote places like the Colombian Amazonian Jungle, when inserted into a global context-such as the hierarchical system of international film festivals-become symbols of cosmopolitan cinematic margins, and represent a country in the global spaces that legitimise the importance of that country's film production. The cosmopolitan cinematic margins in the films of Guerra are then strategically situated in environments of global mobility and international prestige

New cinema history and the comparative mode: reflections on comparing historical cinema cultures

Within the new cinema history perspective, the call for more systematic comparative research has been high on the agenda for some time. The recent proliferation of studies on various aspects of film exhibition and cinemagoing creates an enormous potential for data to be integrated and compared, larger patterns to be discovered, and hypotheses to be tested. This article maintains that the work done so far is largely monocentric in the sense that most studies focus on very specific local practices and experiences, often concentrating on film exhibition and audience experiences in particular cities, neighbourhoods or venues. The contribution argues that, similarly to what happened in other disciplines, a comparative perspective might be helpful in trying to understand larger trends, factors or conditions explaining differences and similarities in cinema cultures. After a discussion on the (underdeveloped) comparative mode within film studies in general, this methodological and partly self-reflective essay will go into some of the challenges of doing comparative research on film exhibition and moviegoing. Concentrating on these issues, different levels and modes of comparative research are discussed and illustrated by using data and insights from various historical studies on cinema cultures