Rural Cinema Exhibition and Audiences in a Global Context

Description

Although it has only been in the last decade that the planet’s population balance tipped from a predominantly rural makeup towards an urban one, the field of cinema history has demonstrated a disproportionate skew toward the urban. Within audience studies, however, an increasing number of scholars are turning their attention away from the bright lights of the urban, and towards the less well-lit and infinitely more variegated history of rural cinema-going. Rural Cinema Exhibition and Audiences in A Global Context is the first volume to consider rural cinema-going from a global perspective. It aims to provide a rich and wide-ranging introduction to this growing field, and to further develop some of its key questions. It brings together eighteen international scholars or teams, all representatives of a dynamic, new field. Moving beyond a Western focus is essential for thinking through questions of rural exhibition, distribution and cinema experience, since over the relatively short history of cinema it is the rural that has dominated cinema-goers’ lives in much of the developing world. To this end, the volume also innovates by bringing discussions of North American and European ruralities into dialogue with contributions on Kenya, Brazil, China, Thailand, South Africa and Australia. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Introduction: Rural Cinema Exhibition and Audiences in a Global Context—Not Just a Slower Transition to Modernity (Daniela Treveri Gennari, Danielle Hipkins, Catherine O’Rawe)....Pages 1-13 Front Matter ....Pages 15-15 The Use of Geographical Categories in Cinema Studies: An Ontological Examination (Elisa Ravazzoli)....Pages 17-29 Kanda’s Grounds and the Ritual Experience of Rural Cinema in Narok, Kenya (Solomon Waliaula)....Pages 31-45 The Business of ‘Wholesome Entertainment’: The Mascioli Film Circuit of Northeastern Ontario (Jessica L. Whitehead)....Pages 47-70 Front Matter ....Pages 71-71 Spaces In-Between: The Railway and Early Cinema in Rural, Western Canada (Paul S. Moore)....Pages 73-89 Rurban Outfitters: Cinema and Rural Cultural Development in New Hampshire’s North Country, 1896–1917 (Jeffrey Klenotic)....Pages 91-113 Front Matter ....Pages 115-115 Oral Memories of Cinema-Going in Rural Italy of the 1950s (Danielle Hipkins, Daniela Treveri Gennari, Catherine O’Rawe, Silvia Dibeltulo, Sarah Culhane)....Pages 117-133 Belgian Film Culture Beyond the Big City: Cinema-Going in the Provincial and Rural Periphery of Antwerp (Philippe Meers, Daniël Biltereyst)....Pages 135-154 The Social Experience of Going to the Movies in the 1930s–1960s in a Small Texas Border Town: Moviegoing Habits and Memories of Films in Laredo, Texas (José Carlos Lozano, Philippe Meers, Daniël Biltereyst)....Pages 155-170 The Social Geography of ‘Going Out’: Teenagers and Community Cinema in Rural Australia (Karina Aveyard)....Pages 171-183 Front Matter ....Pages 185-185 Projecting Modernity: Sol Plaatje’s Touring Cinema Exhibition in 1920s South Africa (Jacqueline Maingard)....Pages 187-202 Controlling Rural Cinemagoing by Appropriating a Film Format: The Catholic Adventure of ‘Pathé-Rural’ in Interwar France (Mélisande Leventopoulos)....Pages 203-218 UNESCO, Mobile Cinema, and Rural Audiences: Exhibition Histories and Instrumental Ideologies of the 1940s (Ian Goode)....Pages 219-235 Reconsidering Post-Revolutionary Cultural Change: Rural Film Projection Teams in Shaanxi Province, 1949–1956 (Matthew D. Johnson)....Pages 237-260 Silence under the Linden Tree: Rural Cinema-Going in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s (Lucie Česálková)....Pages 261-279 Front Matter ....Pages 281-281 Language and Cultural Nearness: Film Programming Strategies and Audience Preferences in Big Cities and Small Towns in the Netherlands 1934–1936 (Clara Pafort-Overduin)....Pages 283-302 Post-war Thai Cinema: Audiences and Film Style in a Divided Nation (Mary J. Ainslie)....Pages 303-324 Youth, Leisure, and Modernity in the Film One Summer of Happiness (1951): Exploring the Space of Rural Film Exhibition in Swedish Post-war Cinema (Åsa Jernudd)....Pages 325-337 Cine Centímetro: Memories and Cinemagoing Practices in an MGM Replica Cinema in the Rio de Janeiro Countryside (Talitha Ferraz)....Pages 339-355 Back Matter ....Pages 357-368