Cinema Beyond the City Small-Town & Rural Film Culture in Europe

by Thissen, Judith; Zimmermann, Clemens

• ISBN13: 9781844578467
• ISBN10: 1844578461
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-01-12
• Publisher: British Film Institute

Summary

This innovative study offers a comparative history of cinema in rural and small-town Europe from the early 1900s to the present. Leading scholars explore cinema's development as a social, cultural and economic institution crucially intertwined with the processes of urbanization, industrialization and the rise of consumer capitalism.

Author Biography

Judith Thissen is Associate Professor of Film History at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She has published widely on the subject of film culture, cinema audiences and social history in international journals and numerous anthologies. She is the co-editor of Contemporary Culture: New Perspectives on Arts and Humanities Research (2013). In 2011, she launched with Frank Kessler a series of workshops devoted to Comparative Cinema History, focussing in particular on Europe.

Clemens Zimmermann is Professor of History and Chair of Cultural and Media History at Saarland University, Germany. He has published extensively on media history, rural-urban relations, and the European metropolis. He is the author of Die Zeit der Metropolen (3rd edition 2015) and Medien im Nationalsozialismus (2007). His edited books include Industrial Cities: History and Future (2013) and Creative Urban Milieus: Historical Perspectives on Culture, Economy and the City (with Martina Hessler, 2008).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: A New Approach to European Cinema History; Judith Thissen
PART I: LOCAL DYNAMICS
1. Small-town cinema in Scotland: The particularity of place; John Caughie
2. Film culture and the Catholic milieu in the Münsterland: Billerbeck and Telgte in the 1950s; Dörthe Gruttmann
3. Where the exceptional and the everyday meet: Exploring cinema culture in British seaside towns; Tim Snelson
PART II: REGIONAL PATTERNS
4. Cinemagoing in Sweden in the 1940s: Civil society organisations and the expansion of rural film exhibition; Ã…sa Jernudd and Mats Lundmark
5. Film consumers in the country: The culture and business of cinemagoing in the Netherlands; Judith Thissen
6. Cinema and social life in the rural Gironde: Insights from an oral history project; Corinne Marache
7. Far from Swinging London: Memories of non-urban cinema-going in 1960s Britain; Matthew Jones
PART III: ALTERNATICE EXHIBITION PRACTICES
8. Corporate film shows and the initiation of rural audiences to film and consumer culture; Yvonne Zimmermann
9. 'Coming up this weekend': Ambulant film exhibition in the Netherlands; Thunnis van Oort
10. Catholic cinephilia in the countryside: The Jeunesse agricole chrétienne and the formation of rural audiences in 1950s France; Mélisande Leventopoulos
11. Alternative cinema in the youth centre movement in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s; Gunter Mahlerwein
PART IV: CONTEMPORARY TRENDS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
12. Film education, technology and popular culture: Community cinema in rural areas of the United Kingdom; Karina Aveyard
13. Le Pestel in Die (Drôme): Quality cinema in a semi-rural setting; Kristian Feigelson
14. Cinema in the 'fog city': Film exhibition and socio-geography in Flanders; Daniel Biltereyst & Lies van de Vijver
15. 'Town centres first': The relocation of the cinema from out-of-town to the town centre in Britain; Stuart Hanson
Index