NEWSLETTER
Summer 04
OFF-SCREEN
SPACES: University
of Ulster, Coleraine - 28-30 July An
international conference on film, television and media: Cultures and
policies The conference
will explore the relationship between ‘global’ popular culture and various
definitions of ‘local’ culture. Crucial to an understanding of this
relationship is the concept of ‘the region’ as it has become reconfigured
by global economic and cultural forces. Regional cultures exist in relation
and in opposition to dominant national cultures and interact with them
in complex and contradictory ways. National
cultures are themselves often posited as ‘regional’ cultures in opposition
to the global and the concept of ‘critical regionalism’ has been canvassed
as a challenge to global conformity or homogeneity. On the other hand,
in line with the strategies of multinational corporations more generally,
multinational software manufacturers have divided the global market
into ‘regions’ for the purpose of controlling the DVD market. This would
suggest that, despite the potential of regional cultures to offer alternatives
to the global market, there is in fact nothing intrinsically challenging
or radical in the concept of the region. The conference will explore
the complex and contradictory relationships among the local, the regional,
the national and the global and assess the implications for both media
representation and local, national and transnational audio-visual policy.
Keynote
Lectures and Plenary Sessions: John
Tomlinson: Globalisation and Cultural Identity Ang,
Ien: Changing Meanings of Asia and Asianness in Contemporary Global
Culture World
Premiere Screening: Rebel Frontier, Desmond Bell, (2004, 64 mins.)
Desmond Bell will attend the screening and answer questions afterwards. Toby
Miller: The People of the United States Cannot be Trusted: Globalised
Hollywood 2 Panel
Discussion: Film Policy in the UK: Four Years of the Film Council
with David Steele, Senior Executive Researcher, UK Film Council;
Prof. Sylvia Harvey, University of Lincoln; Prof. John Hill,
University of Ulster and member, UK Film Council and Richard Williams,
Director Northern IrelandTelevision Commission Pat
Loughrey, Director, Nations and Regions, BBC: Local Identity in
the Global Village: the BBC’s Regional Policy Sylvia
Harvey When the
Chairman and the Director General of the BBC both resigned in the wake
of the Hutton Report in January 2004 there had not been such a politically-motivated
culling of senior BBC staff since the enforced resignation of Alastair
Milne in January 1987 - despatched by a Tory grandee who had been appointed
by Margaret Thatcher. By strange coincidence, or perhaps by action of
some sardonic higher power commenting on the continuities between Thatcherism
and Blairism, both Alastair Milne and Greg Dyke walked the plank out
of Broadcasting House on the same date: 29 January. There
are some important differences, of course, as well as some similarities
in the causes and consequences of these events. The cull of 2004 took
place during the early stages of the debate about the renewal of the
BBC’s Charter. And the attendant storm of publicity seems to have had
the effect of increasing public interest in what has previously been
a rather un-noticed and elaborately esoteric ritual, namely the review
by government of an organisation (the BBC) operating under the provisions
of a Royal Charter. Taken in conjunction with the emergence, also in
January, of the new regulatory body, the Office of Communications -
‘Ofcom’ - designed to oversee both telecommunications and television,
and the first few months of this year have been a busy time for politicians,
journalists, media historians and policy theorists. Milne’s
resignation was a consequence of government anger at the BBC’s coverage
of the American bombing of Libya, allied with controversies over the
investigation of war and terror in Northern Ireland (some will remember
the ‘Real Lives affair’) and the BBC’s attempt at investigating the
secret services (Duncan Campbell’s famous or infamous series: Secret
Society). Dyke’s disappearance was a consequence of disagreements about
coverage of the war in Iraq. Both men were effectively sacked as a result
of direct and indirect pressure from the government of the day. Michael
Grade (long before his recent appointment as the new Chairman of the
BBC) was to refer to the removal of Milne as an example of the ‘brutalisation’
of the BBC. But what
do these affairs of state and of front-page newspaper coverage have
to do with the more sober pace and objectives of scholarly research?
The Public Policy and National Identity strand of research within the
AHRB Centre has been attempting to keep abreast of current changes in
public policy, to analyse and assess these changes and to contribute
– where appropriate – to the shaping of policy. This work
began with a response to the government’s White Paper on the Future
of Communications issued in December 2000. Prepared by no less than
two government departments (the Department of Trade and Industry together
with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) the White Paper and
its subsequent legislation represented the biggest shake-up in the regulatory
framework for broadcast communications in the United Kingdom since the
ending of the BBC monopoly and the creation of commercial television
in the 1950s. The White Paper outlined the sometimes conflicting objectives
of support for the development of dynamic markets in the communications
industries and recognition of the role played by public service broadcasting
in the political and cultural life of a nation. Our response highlighted
some of the difficulties of combining the regulation of communications
infrastructure (and issues of competition related to the provision of
telecommunications services) with the regulation of television content
(with all of its attendant controversies around issues of quality and
diversity in programming, the maintenance of impartiality in news and
current affairs and the desirability of support for indigenous production).
We noted the cultural and political significance of television and its
role in facilitating informed citizenship, and expressed some concern
that any approach which appeared to prioritise issues of economic competition
above those of cultural significance might result in a reduction not
an expansion of real choice for viewers and listeners. As the
Communications Bill passed through Parliament and a strong controversy
emerged about the government’s proposal to enable American ownership
of British television companies – for the first time in the history
of UK broadcasting – the Centre organised a well-attended public meeting
to debate the issues. Around seventy people met in Sheffield to listen
to politicians representing the views of government and of opposition,
to contribute their own views and to hear, also, proposals coming from
the community media sector. Since
the Communications Bill became law in July 2003 and both Ofcom and the
DCMS have swung into action with their reviews of public service television
and the BBC’s royal charter, the Centre has continued to make written
submissions in the various public consultations and to participate in
an ever-growing number of mainly metropolitan-based policy seminars.
Throughout this process we have been asking to what extent and in what
ways academic research into communications policy might contribute to
the framing of public interest principles and objectives. Our most recent
written contribution to the debate about Charter Renewal has suggested
that licence-fee payers might take on the responsibility of electing
the governors of the BBC, thereby both improving structures of accountability
and strengthening the BBC’s independence from the government of the
day. We shall
never have the resources to match the treasure house of statistics and
the detailed analysis of audience trends being assembled by Ofcom, DCMS
and the BBC, but we may be able to make a modest contribution to re-framing
the key questions that underlie public debate about the social, cultural
and political significance of broadcasting in the twenty-first century. Film and
broadcasting policy submissions to a variety of public bodies can be
found on this site at www.bftv.ac.uk/policy. The Project
was formally launched with a Press release on 20 April, coinciding with
the launch of Film London, the new government-backed agency intended
to coordinate services to production and all other activities that foster
the presence of film in the capital. Ken Livingstone was one of the
speakers at the City launch of Film London, and the only one to remind
the large audience that film isn’t only about economic benefits, but
has long been a vital cultural experience, especially for the poor.
As Film London looks to develop schemes to make film more varied and
accessible throughout the city today, with grants to specialist festivals
and projects, the Centre’s London Project will be unearthing evidence
of how film spread rapidly as a new industry and entertainment during
the late Victorian and early Edwardian era. A first
Advisory Seminar for the project was held at Birkbeck on 16 June, with
some twenty invited experts from many fields. These included Richard
Gray and Allen Eyles from Cinematograph Theatres Association, which
has done much to promote awareness of the surviving material history
of cinema-going through publications and campaigns on historic cinemas;
the economic historian John Sedgwick and film historians Richard Brown,
Nicholas Hiley and Stephen Herbert; and Vanessa Toulmin, research director
of the National Fairground Archive at Sheffield University. Also present
were Jude Cowan, a Birkbeck research student working on early British
cinema, and Patrick Keiller, filmmaker and currently AHRB Research Fellow
in the Creative and Performing Arts at the Royal College of Art. Luke McKernan
outlined the project’s aims as: Among
current research that will inform the project, Jon Burrows’ recent major
study of ‘penny gaffs’ and other early types of exhibition venue in
London (published in two parts in Film History vol 16, nos 1 and 2)
challenges received wisdom about these equivalents of America’s ‘nickelodeons’.
Making use of a wider range of licensing and other records, Burrows
questions previous estimates of their numbers and dating, proving how
fundamental research is urgently needed in this field. The seminar contributed
strongly to identifying both refined research questions and methods
and sources that may help answer them. Luke’s
presentation ended with a 1910 quotation from Montagu Pyke that strikes
a balanced note amid the claim and counter-claim that surrounded early
cinema. ‘It forms in fact – I like the word – a diversion. It is in
some respects what old Izaak Walton claimed angling to be: An employment
for idle time which is then not idly spent, a rest to the mind, a cheerer
of spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator
of passions, a procurer of contentedness.’
CURRENT
ACTIVITY
EVENTS
Regionalism and Globalised Cultures
PROJECTS
THE
LONDON PROJECT
Mapping the Metropolis
ALL
CHANGE IN BRITISH BROADCASTING
An
early shop-front cinema in London’s Old Kent Road
The London Project, as reported in the last Newsletter, has been getting
under way. Luke McKernan’s appointment as Senior Research Fellow in
May (on half-time secondment from the British Universities Film and
Video Council) has kick-started an intensive process of assessing the
available information about the early film business in London and identifying
sources of new data. Also appointed is Jonathan Davis, a senior consultant
to the UK Film Council, who will advise on presentation of the London
project’s findings in ways which may be of particular interest to today’s
planners.
- to provide a comprehensive assessment of the early film business in
London
- to produce a summary of existing knowledge and to create new resources
for further the study of early film in and beyond London
- to establish the physical, social and economic presence of film in
London between 1894-1914
- to establish a methodology for the socio-economic analysis of early
film
- to obtain a new recognition of film as a social factor among historians
of this period
He then offered an impressive synthesis of existing knowledge before
spelling out how much remains to be discovered. Much of the seminar
was profitably devoted to discussing how little is known about many
aspects of the business, from questions of topography to the cost and
means of film transport, and how admission prices related to disposable
income for different classes. The recent example of the mobile phone
phenomenon seeming to have no obvious economic rationale provided a
striking reminder of how unexpected yet dramatic shifts in media consumption
continue today.
Allen
Eyles (l.) and Luke McKernan at the London Project’s first Advisory Seminar
at Birkbeck in June, with Montagu Pyke’s words on screen.