Slide 10
Slide 10 text
Lobato, Ramon. 2012.
Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution. Bloomsbury Publishing.
‘to be of social consequence, a film must first reach an audience. In other words, it must be
distributed. Distribution, the mediating process between production and reception, is the missing link in
film studies. It is the least studied sector of the film industry, and analysis of distributive issues is left
largely to the trade press. This is unfortunate, because distribution plays a key role in film culture—it
determines what films we see, and when and how we see them. Crucially, it also determines what we do not
see. Distribution, then, is about cultural power, about the regulation, provision, and denial of audiovisual
content. Further to this, I argue that distribution is also a space of textual change.It is tempting to dismiss
distribution as a neutral process in which media content is simply delivered to the audiences which seek it,
but this is rarely, if ever, the case. Those films fortunate enough to be distributed change as they move
through time and space; they are translated, re-titled, re-dubbed and re-edited for different markets; new
publics are imagined and constituted. Distribution networks also frame film experiences, elevating
some (opening nights, film festival screenings) to the status of a cultural event and relegating others
(two-for-one weekly rentals, late-night movies) to the bottom of the value chain. The precondition for
textual politics and a site of politics in its own right, distribution remains an obscure area of research in film
studies.’(p.2)
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