Ethnography as a tool of cinema history: cinemagoing in light of the experience of a local film market

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Date
2016
Authors
Leveratto, Jean-Marc
Montebello,Fabrice
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Film and Screen Media, University College Cork
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Abstract
This article shows the heuristic value of a film consumption study that combines oral archives and fieldwork with written sources. Oral archives on film consumption provided by a local film market of Longwy, an industrial town of north-eastern France, during the 1950s allow the researcher to reconstruct the audience’s collective experience of the films released on this market. Combined with a systematic study of local releases and their box office, they give us access to the artistic expertise of local filmgoers in the past and motivate us to challenge the conventional interpretation of film consumption as the ostensibly predictable expression of a social taste.
Description
Keywords
Film consumption , Film market , Local filmgoers , Oral archives , Longwy , Collective experience , Artistic expertise , Fieldwork , Written sources
Citation
Leveratto, J.-M. and Montebello, F. (2016) 'Ethnography as a tool of cinema history: cinemagoing in light of the experience of a local film market', Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 11, pp. 62–77. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.11.04