Culture, Communication, and National Identity


Book Description

?There can be no political sovereignty without culture sovereignty.' So argued the CBC in 1985 in its evidence to the Caplan/Sauvageau Task Force on Broadcasting Policy. Richard Collins challenges this assumption. He argues in this study of nationalism and Canadian television policy that Canada's political sovereignty depends much less on Canadian content in television than has generally been accepted. His analysis focuses on television drama, at the centre of television policy in the 1980s. Collins questions the conventional image of Canada as a weak national entity undermined by its population's predilection for foreign television. Rather, he argues, Canada is held together, not by a shared repertoire of symbols, a national culture, but by other social forces, notably political institutions. Collins maintains that important advantages actually and potentially flow from Canada's wear national symbolic culture. Rethinking the relationships between television and society in Canada may yield a more successful broadcasting policy, more popular television programming, and a better understanding of the links between culture and the body politic. As the European Community moves closer to political unity, the Canadian case may become more relevant to Europe, which, Collins suggests, already fears the ?Canadianization? of its television. He maintains that a European multilingual society, without a shared culture or common European audio-visual sphere and with viewers watching foreign television, can survive successfully as a political entity ? just as Canada has.




Canadian Film and Video


Book Description

This extensive bibliography and reference guide is an invaluable resource for researchers, practitioners, students, and anyone with an interest in Canadian film and video. With over 24,500 entries, of which 10,500 are annotated, it opens up the literature devoted to Canadian film and video, at last making it readily accessible to scholars and researchers. Drawing on both English and French sources, it identifies books, catalogues, government reports, theses, and periodical and newspaper articles from Canadian and non-Canadian publications from the first decade of the twentieth century to 1989. The work is bilingual; descriptive annotations are presented in the language(s) of the original publication. Canadian Film and Video / Film et vidéo canadiens provides an in-depth guide to the work of over 4000 individuals working in film and video and 5000 films and videos. The entries in Volume I cover topics such as film types, the role of government, laws and legislation, censorship, festivals and awards, production and distribution companies, education, cinema buildings, women and film, and video art. A major section covers filmmakers, video artists, cinematographers, actors, producers, and various other film people. Volume II presents an author index, a film and video title index, and a name and subject index. In the tradition of the highly acclaimed publication Art and Architecture in Canada these volumes fill a long-standing need for a comprehensive reference tool for Canadian film and video. This bibliography guides and supports the work of film historians and practitioners, media librarians and visual curators, students and researchers, and members of the general public with an interest in film and video.




Film Policy


Book Description

Film Policy is the first comprehensive overview of the workings of the international film industry. The authors examine film cultures and film policy across the world, explaining why Hollywood cinema dominates the global film market, and the effects of the rise of television and video on the international industry. In a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia, the authors explore the relationship between Hollywood cinema product and national film cultures, and trace the development of international and national film policies, looking at issues of financing, regulation, protectionism and censorship.




An RDP Policy Audit


Book Description

This booklet assesses the first democratic South African Government's policies, legislation and delivery performance against the directives offered by the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP).




In the National Interest


Book Description

Gary Evans traces the development of the postwar NFB, picking up the story where he left it at the end of his earlier work, John Grierson and the National Film Board: The Politics of Wartime Propaganda.




Reconceptualising Film Policies


Book Description

This volume explores and interrogates the shifts and changes in both government and industry-based screen policies over the past 30 years. It covers a diverse range of film industries from different parts of the world, along with the interrelationship between different localities, policy regimes and technologies/media. Featuring in-depth case studies and interviews with practitioners and policy-makers, this book provides a timely overview of government and industry’s responses to the changing landscape of the production, distribution, and consumption of screen media.




Media Law and Policy in Nigeria


Book Description

This study of the state of media law in Nigeria contains analyses of the interplay of law, politics, the economy and other social factors on the state of freedom of expression. Juxtaposed are the regime of media law and regulations, judicial interpretation of these laws, the existing environment for the realisation of freedom of expression and the associated general political, social and economic environment. Critical attention is given to the various enactments regulating freedom of expression and the provisions on freedom of expression in the 1963, 1979 and 1999 Constitutions of Nigeria. How national media laws compare with international treaties and how regulators influence media contents, are also examined. The book is addressed to a wide audience: mass communication and law students, lecturers and teachers in tertiary institutions offering relevant courses, legal practitioners, journalists and those working in the field of mass communication, human rights and political activists, politicians and party bureaucracies, policy makers, researchers and experts in think tanks.




Magic and Modernity


Book Description

This is the first book to explore comparatively how magic—usually portrayed as the antithesis of the modern—is also at home in modernity.




South African National Cinema


Book Description

South African National Cinema examines how cinema in South Africa represents national identities, particularly with regard to race. This significant and unique contribution establishes interrelationships between South African cinema and key points in South Africa’s history, showing how cinema figures in the making, entrenching and undoing of apartheid. This study spans the twentieth century and beyond through detailed analyses of selected films, beginning with De Voortrekkers (1916) through to Mapantsula (1988) and films produced post apartheid, including Drum (2004), Tsotsi (2005) and Zulu Love Letter (2004). Jacqueline Maingard discusses how cinema reproduced and constructed a white national identity, taking readers through cinema’s role in building white Afrikaner nationalism in the 1930s and 1940s. She then moves to examine film culture and modernity in the development of black audiences from the 1920s to the 1950s, especially in a group of films that includes Jim Comes to Joburg (1949) and Come Back, Africa (1959). Jacqueline Maingard also considers the effects of the apartheid state’s film subsidy system in the 1960s and 1970s and focuses on cinema against apartheid in the 1980s. She reflects upon shifting national cinema policies following the first democratic election in 1994 and how it became possible for the first time to imagine an inclusive national film culture. Illustrated throughout with excellent visual examples, this cinema history will be of value to film scholars and historians, as well as to practitioners in South Africa today.