Description
Book SynopsisThis book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This book provides an alternative perspective into the audiovisual and media industries of eastern and central Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. In doing so, it offers insight into the ways the screen industries of small nations are positioned in and respond to globalization and digitalization. Petr Szczepanik suggests that for these ‘digital peripheries’, globalization and digitalization are as yet incomplete, stumbling processes, closely intertwined with and mediated by deeply local circumstances and players. Instead of a top-down economic or political overview, this book places central focus on the lived realities of producers as key initiators, facilitators, and cultural intermediaries. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it looks closely at how their agency is circumscribed by the limited scale and peripheral positioning of the markets in which they operate, and how they struggle to come to terms with these constraints through their business strategies, creative thinking and professional self-perceptions. Each of the seven chapters provides a close study of one such production practice. This includes but is not limited to independent producers limited by the size of their home markets; the ‘service producers’ working on large Western projects in Prague and Budapest and short-form online video production with its promise of dynamic growth in the era of mobile. However diverse, all these cases illustrate that while many industry practices and actors remain territorially and nationally bound, it is impossible to understand the full complexity of media markets and producer practices in the internet era without considering transcultural networks and flows. Theoretically building on the literature in critical media industry studies, this book offers a comparative analytical framework for studying small and/or peripheral media industries beyond east-central Europe.
Trade ReviewA highly valuable contribution … it is path-opening and a generous source of information, and it can inspire similar studies on various other European small industries and peripheral markets on various aspects of production and distribution … A valuable critical intervention against processes of marginalization and self-colonization of smaller European industries and their actors. * Studies in Eastern European Cinema *
A tour-de-force meticulously researched analysis of East-Central European production. Unpacks how new co-financing schemes "circumscribe" small, peripheral film industries. Ably derails lazier academic platitudes about producer agency, national cinemas, and transnationalism. A precedent-setting, theoretically astute "must-read" for media industry scholars. -- John Thornton Caldwell, UCLA, USA
Focusing on producers in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, Szczepanik clearly shows how the realities of smallness and peripherality shape the globalization and digitization of media production. Beautifully written and the result of extensive research,
Screen Industries in East Central Europe makes a very significant contribution to media studies. It also takes small-nation film studies to a new level of analytic precision. -- Mette Hjort, author of Small Nation, Global Cinema
This brilliantly researched book presents an unparalleled view of how film and television is made in East-Central Europe today. Grounded in deep knowledge of the historical underpinnings, power structures, and geopolitics of contemporary media production, Szczepanik offers a powerful refutation of the Cold War frameworks that still, too often, define understandings of East-Central European media. -- Alice Lovejoy, University of Minnesota, USA
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: East-central European media as digital peripheries 1. Post-socialist producer: The production culture of a small and peripheral media industry 2. Managing the ‘Ida effect’: An art-house producer breaking out of the periphery 3. The service producer and the globalization of media production 4. Breaking through the East European ceiling: Minority co-production and the new symbolic economy of small-market cinemas 5. Public service television as a producer 6. HBO Europe’s original programming in the era of streaming wars 7. Digital producers: Short-form web television positions itself between clickbait and public service Conclusion: ‘High circumscription’ in the era of global streamers, and more questions to be asked Bibliography Index
