110 research outputs found
Re-Intermediation: Distribution, Online Access, and Gatekeeping in the Digital European Market
No full textThis special issue of Cinéma & Cie analyses the logic and processes of reintermediation
emerging in the contemporary European media industry
landscape, providing an opportunity to bring questions of availability, text
circulation and gatekeeping to the centre of scholarly debates and investigations.
Through contributions showcasing a wide array of methodological and
theoretical approaches, the volume illustrates and analyses the presence of new
gatekeepers, their impact in shaping texts and their consumption in different
European contexts. Its case studies include file sharing, Curzon Home Cinema,
VOD services and the problematic implementation of the Digital Single Market
policy.
The introduction is structured in three parts. In the first, we define the logic of reintermediation
as the change in traditional intermediaries and the development
of new, different gatekeepers; we then emphasize its importance for a full
understanding of the cultural and economic struggles in the contemporary
European audiovisual market. The second part provides an example of the
ongoing re-intermediation processes by focusing on the lesser known case of
‘aggregators’ for VOD platforms, in reference to the activities of the international
company Under the Milky Way. Finally, the third part provides a detailed
overview of the articles included in the special issue
At Home With the Nouvelle Vague: Apartment Plots and Domestic Urbanism in Godard’s Une femme est une femme and Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7
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‘The European Parliament projecting cultural diversity across Europe’: European quality films and the Lux Prize
No full textThe purpose of this article is to engage with the question of quality cinematic productions in European film industry by looking at the Lux Prize and its attempts to frame and promote a transnational cultural heritage and values. In fact, the Lux Prize, created in 2007 by the European Parliament, promotes the circulation of a selection of European quality films, which have distinguished themselves for their artistic merits and for addressing a series of European issues from the ‘diversity of European traditions’ to the process of European integration. As such, we argue that the prize reinforces the tension between the opposite goals of the promotion of European cultural diversity and the creation of a single market that has marked the European audio-visual policy since the early 1990s. On the one hand, the Lux Prize aims at shaping the audience perception of cultural/social themes through the use of a ‘pedagogical kit’ for the selected films, illustrating in 24 different EU languages the films’ contents and the social issues represented. On the other hand, the Lux Prize aims at enhancing the transnational circulation of European films, as the selected products are subtitled in all of the 24 languages and are theatrically released all over the Union with the financial support of the European Parliament. With this paper, we aim to look at the role of the Lux Prize as an intended tool for transnational audience building through a comparative analyses of the films awarded. Using data made available from the European Audio-visual Observatory and by the National Film Agencies, we will analyse its first decade of activity, underlying how the scope of the prize has evolved and framing it within other supranational programmes supporting the circulation of European cinema, such as the MEDIA/Creative Europe or Eurimages
The Logic of Re-Intermediation: An Introduction
No full textIn the months surrounding Netflix’s arrival on the Italian market, different media outlets presented the platform not only as revolutionary, a game-changer, but also as a threat for established broadcasters. After a long wait, with hype fanned by the news coming from the US, the launch in many other European markets, and the strengths of the first branded productions, Italian TV audiences have also been able to access Netflix’s library and original series, since 22 October 2015. On the one hand, Netflix has reaped the results of its effort to establish a long-term promotional discourse in Italy. On the other, however, Netflix’s late appearance was also couched in the context of a complex media scenario and an already established national on-demand market. A rhetoric of disintermediation has been carefully constructed at the exact moment when a powerful global intermediary was entering the Italian market, masking its (future, intended) gatekeeping role. Adopting a media-industry and production-studies approach, this essay reconstructs Netflix’s arrival in the Italian landscape, focusing on the promotional discourse and its rhetoric, and on the reactions from the press, to give a deeper, more nuanced view of the phenomenon in the national media arena
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