This workshop aims at revisiting the history of film importers/exporters and distributors throughout the 20^th century by examining the social inscription of their trade. Moguls, go-betweens and/or smugglers, film traders were main actors in determining the value of films, building film markets, bringing out audiences by giving them (or not) access to the films. Yet, the history of cinema has long ignored the figure of the distributor, too bland to obscure the ethereal figure of the author, too close to the limelight to interest those, less numerous, researching “those wonderful people out there in the dark,” the audience.

Presentation

This workshop aims at revisiting the history of film importers/exporters and distributors throughout the 20^th century by examining the social inscription of their trade. Moguls, go-betweens and/or smugglers, film traders were main actors in determining the value of films, building film markets, bringing out audiences by giving them (or not) access to the films. Yet, the history of cinema has long ignored the figure of the distributor, too bland to obscure the ethereal figure of the author, too close to the limelight to interest those, less numerous, researching “those wonderful people out there in the dark,” the audience. This workshop seeks to reconstruct the diversity of networks these businessmen/women used to maintain, how they positioned themselves in relation to their peers, remembering that many distributors also acted as exhibitors and producers.

Attendance

This workshop will be held in-person at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Paris Nord (room 409), but will also be open to the online public. To receive the Zoom link, please register with the organisers.

Programme

10:00 Welcoming coffee

10:30 Opening Morgan Corriou, Caroline Damiens, Mélisande Leventopoulos: “Introduction”

10:45 Moguls and Small Traders

• Rafael de Luna Freire (Universidade Federal Fluminense): “Early Film Distribution in Brazil: Who Were those Men?”
• Aymeric Pantet (Turun Yliopisto): “Aito Mäkinen and the Distribution of International Art-Cinema in Finland”
• James Burns (Clemson University): “South Asian Cinema Entrepreneurs in the British Caribbean”

12:15 Lunch

14:00 Corporate Practices

• Ravinder Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University) (online): “Film Distribution in the Late Colonial South India during the World War II: A Case Study of the South India Pictures (SIP)”
• Ekaterina Artemeva (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle): “Interaction between Pathé and the Russian Film Community in 1907-1913”
• Francesco Di Chiara (Università Telematica eCampus) and Paolo Noto (Università di Bologna): “The Italian Standard Contract of Exhibition and the Politics of its Rewriting (1936-1953)”

15.30 Coffee break

16:00 Markets across Borders

• Nataliya Puchenkina (Université de Lorraine): “Kino across borders: Russian Diaspora in Paris and Soviet Films in the Late 1920s”
• Julie K. Allen (Brigham Young University) (on-line): “Showmen and Schemers: The Cutthroat Politics of Silent Film Distribution in Settler-Colonial Australia”
• Dong Hoon Kim (University of Oregon) (on-line): “Selling the Socialist Dream, Building Transnational Connections: Global Film Distribution Practices of North Korean cinema”

17:30 Closing remarks