User:Jahsonic/In search of the cinematic Losfeld
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| + | This article is based on a version first published in 2007[http://jahsonic.wordpress.com/2007/02/03/the-cinematic-losfeld/]. | ||
| One aspect of the history of the art of film making remains largely unwritten. The financial aspects of film making, namely the history of producers and distributors of films. Compared to the book industry, the film industry is infinite times more capital intensive. So while it is easy, almost risk-free and relatively cheap to write a novel that satisfies minority tastes, to produce a film that caters to minority audiences requires much more money and is a much riskier undertaking. [[Tyler Cowen]] was the first to point this out to me in his book on the economics of culture. | One aspect of the history of the art of film making remains largely unwritten. The financial aspects of film making, namely the history of producers and distributors of films. Compared to the book industry, the film industry is infinite times more capital intensive. So while it is easy, almost risk-free and relatively cheap to write a novel that satisfies minority tastes, to produce a film that caters to minority audiences requires much more money and is a much riskier undertaking. [[Tyler Cowen]] was the first to point this out to me in his book on the economics of culture. | ||
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This article is based on a version first published in 2007[1]. One aspect of the history of the art of film making remains largely unwritten. The financial aspects of film making, namely the history of producers and distributors of films. Compared to the book industry, the film industry is infinite times more capital intensive. So while it is easy, almost risk-free and relatively cheap to write a novel that satisfies minority tastes, to produce a film that caters to minority audiences requires much more money and is a much riskier undertaking. Tyler Cowen was the first to point this out to me in his book on the economics of culture.
A film producer's job is analogous to that of a publisher in the book industry: he finances the final product, a cultural artifact. A film distributor is someone who buys the rights to a certain film in order to distribute it in his own country or region. Typically, he will have to market the film, provide subtitles for it and find screening opportunities. The analogy in book publishing is the role of a foreign publishing house that translates a book and distributes/markets it in its own territory.
Both a producer and a distributor try to reconcile the art of commerce and taste. In matters of taste I always embrace the heady nobrow cocktail of high art, eroticism, horror, philosophy, experimentalism, counterculture, subversion and avant-garde. This mix is a minority taste, I am well aware of that but some people have tried to cater to people of my taste. In publishing, this person is best exemplified by French publisher Eric Losfeld.
In search of Losfeld's cinematic alter ego I want to hilight the careers of film producers and/or distributors such as Anatole Dauman in France; Antony Balch and Richard Gordon in the U. K.; Roger Corman, Ben Barenholtz and Radley Metzger in North America. These entrepreneurs ran businesses that have provided us with films that mix high and low culture or have financed their high art productions with the proceeds of their more commercial and exploitative productions. Consider this the first part of an investigation which I hope to continue over the coming months. In the meanwhile, feel free to comment if you know of distributors/producers who fit this description.
See also
- Anatole Dauman
- Roger Corman
- Write profiles on: Pierre Braunberger (Marker, Resnais, Borowczyk and you name it)
- Serge Silberman (Bunuel, Kurosawa and…Jess Franco)
- Oscar Dancigers (Most of the films from Bunuel’s mexican era, Viva Maria, Orson Welles’ Don Quijote).
- James B. Harris
- Grove Press film distribution (William Klein films, titles that were related to their books (Miller’s Quiet days in Clichy, Duras, Beckett) and I am curious…yellow))
- Jean-Pierre Rassam
