Table Of ContentWorld Cinema On Demand
ii
World Cinema On Demand
Global Film Cultures in the Era of
Online Distribution
Edited by
Stefano Baschiera and Alexander Fisher
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are
trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in the United States of America 2022
Volume Editor’s Part of the Work © Stefano Baschiera and Alexander Fisher
Each chapter © of Contributors
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii constitute an
extension of this copyright page.
Cover image © Paul Vensth / Unsplash.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this
book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any
inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but
can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Baschiera, Stefano, 1977– editor. | Fisher, Alexander (Lecturer in film studies),
editor.
Title: World cinema on demand : global film cultures in the eras of online distribution /
edited by Stefano Baschiera and Alexander Fisher.
Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021052338 (print) | LCCN 2021052339 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501348594 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501392399 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781501348600 (epub) | ISBN 9781501348617 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501348624
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures–Distribution–Case studies. | Video-on-demand–Case
studies. | Streaming video–Case studies. | Television broadcasting–Case studies. |
International broadcasting–Case studies.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.D57 W67 2022 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.D57 (ebook) |
DDC 384/.809051–dc23/eng/20220224
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052338
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052339
ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-4859-4
ePDF: 978-1-5013-4861-7
eBook: 978-1-5013-4860-0
Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India
To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.
Contents
List of figures vii
List of contributors viii
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
Stefano Baschiera and Alexander Fisher
Part 1 The limits of disintermediation: Problems of gatekeeping
1 Shifting gatekeepers: Power and influence in informal online film
distribution 15
Virginia Crisp
2 Cinephile file-sharing: Informal distribution, plural canons and
digital film archives 31
Angela Meili
3 Bridges, streams and dams: The multiple negotiated strategies of
distribution and access in Latin American cinema 47
Niamh Thornton
Part 2 Streaming in national and transnational contexts
4 Netflix in Europe: The national in global subscription video on
demand (SVOD) services 69
Stefano Baschiera and Valentina Re
5 Danmaku commenting: A new interaction experience on China’s
streaming platforms 89
Yuanyuan Chen and Rebecca Crawford
6 Turkish online film distribution: Fighting for Indie filmmaking in a
neoliberal and censored context 109
Murat Akser
vi Contents
7 India’s online streaming revolution: Global over-the-top (OTT)
platforms, film spectatorship and the ecosystem of Indian cinemas 125
Nandana Bose
Part 3 Global transformations – Case study: Africa
8 Curating Africa online: The impact of digital technology on the
consumption of African audiovisual content 151
Justine Atkinson and Lizelle Bisschoff
9 Reset mode: African digital video films as expanded cinema 171
Sheila Petty
10 Netflix and Africa: Streaming, branding and tastemaking in
non-domestic African film markets 189
Alexander Fisher
Index 205
Figures
5.1 Commenters confess and use danmaku to make colourful shooting
stars in honour of the meteor in the film Your Name 102
5.2 Chuuya’s (中也) name fills the screen in Bungo Stray Dogs
Dead Apple 103
5.3 Inverted cross symbol 104
5.4 Inverted cross danmaku in Bungo Stray Dogs Dead Apple 104
7.1 Netflix’s first original series, Sacred Games, on a billboard 138
Contributors
Murat Akser is Lecturer and Course Director in Cinematic Arts at the University
of Ulster, UK. Previously he served as a Professor of Cinema and Media Studies,
the chair of the New Media Department and the founding director of the
Cinema and Television MA programme at Kadir Has University, Istanbul,
Turkey. He received his MA degree in Cinema and Media Studies and his PhD
in Communication and Culture from York University, Canada. His research
focuses on the history and aesthetics of Turkish cinema, film genres and trans-
national cinemas. His most recent book is Alternative Media in Contemporary
Turkey (2019).
Justine Atkinson is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow. She is the
founder and director of Aya Films, an international distribution company with
a focus on African cinema. She worked as the Festival Producer of the Africa in
Motion Film Festival between 2013 and 2019. Her PhD research focuses on col-
laborative film curation.
Stefano Baschiera is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen’s University Belfast.
His work on European cinema, material culture and film industries has been pub-
lished in a variety of edited collections and journals including Film International,
Bianco e Nero, New Review of Film and Television Studies and NECSUS: European
Journal of Media Studies. He is the co-editor of Italian Horror Cinema (with Rus
Hunter) and of Cinema and Domestic Space (with Miriam De Rosa).
Lizelle Bisschoff is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the
University of Glasgow, UK. She is a researcher and curator of African film, and
founder of the Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival, an annual African film fes-
tival taking place in Scotland, inaugurated in 2006. She holds a PhD in African
cinema from the University of Stirling in Scotland, in which she researched the
role of women in African film. She has published widely on sub-Saharan African
cinema and regularly attends African film festivals worldwide as speaker and
jury member. In her current role at Glasgow, she teaches African cinema and
continues her research on classic and contemporary African film.
Nandana Bose is an independent scholar, educator and author of the BFI Film
Stars series monograph Madhuri Dixit (2019). A former British Chevening
scholar at the University of Leeds, she holds a PhD degree in Film Studies from
Contributors ix
the University of Nottingham, UK, and is a former associate professor at the
Department of Film Studies, University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA.
She has published on Indian stardom, gender and censorship in such journals as
Cinema Journal, Feminist Media Studies, Velvet Light Trap and Celebrity Studies,
and in anthologies such as Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives (2020),
Figurations in Indian Film (2013) and Silencing Cinema: Film Censorship around
the World (2013).
Yuanyuan Chen is Lecturer in History and Theory of Animation at the
University of Ulster, UK. Her research focuses on contemporary Chinese ani-
mation, with particular interest in the influence of modernism and postmod-
ernism on Chinese animation after the 1980s. Her broader research interests
span animation theory, Asian animation, experimental animation, modernism
and postmodernism, and non-fiction animation. Her articles have been pub-
lished in edited books and international peer-reviewed journals, such as Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs: New Perspectives on Production, Reception, Legacy,
Modernism/Modernity, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Alphaville: Journal of Film
and Screen Media and so on.
Rebecca Crawford is a practice-based PhD candidate in the Faculty of Arts,
Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Ulster, UK. Her interests
include Japanese studies, anime, manga, Japanese video games (such as Japanese
Role-Playing Games (JRPGs)), digital books, branching path and non-linear
narratives, children’s media and visual novels. Her publications include contri-
butions to Mechademia, IEEE and Intersections.
Virginia Crisp is Senior Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries
at King’s College London. Her most recent work is the co-edited collection
Practices of Projection: Histories and Technologies (2020). She is the author of
Film Distribution in the Digital Age: Pirates and Professionals (2015) as well as
numerous articles and book chapters on formal and informal media circulation.
She is also the co-founder and director (with Gabriel Menotti Gonring) of the
Besides the Screen Network (www.besidesthescreen.com) and the co-editor of
Besides the Screen: Moving Images through Promotion, Distribution and Curation
(2015).
Alexander Fisher is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen’s University
Belfast, where he teaches courses on world cinema and film music. His research
examines the aesthetic, cultural and political aspects of international film cul-
tures, with a particular focus on African film, alongside his work on recent
transformations in international film distribution and culture. He has written
