Co-operative Spirit: Development and Variance in the Distribution
Policies of the NYFC, Canyon Cinema, LFMC/Lux and Circles/Cinenova
Presented at the Society for Cinema
and Media Studies conference, Atlanta, 7 March 2004
Though the New York Filmmakers' Co-op, Canyon Cinema, London
Filmmakers' Co-op/Lux and Circles/Cinenova are all distribution
organisations (or organisations with a distribution wing)
structured on the Co-operative model, there has long been
variance between significant aspects of their distribution
practices. Further, as no organisation's policy or practice
has remained entirely static, there is variance within the
history of organisations as well as between them. Nonetheless,
these organisations share a number of key ambitions, challenges,
and, perhaps most importantly, a key significance to the continued
availability of large sections of avant-garde film. This paper
will draw attention to a linked set of recurring dilemmas
in the Co-op model, consider contrasting solutions found at
different times or by different organisations, and the effects
of the resultant strategies.
The linked
set of dilemmas starts with acquisition policy (and, by implication,
de-acquisition policy), which has a direct effect on the size
and nature of the collection. The size of the collection then
determines the size of the problem that storing and maintaining
it presents to the host organisation. Given the historic variance
of public and private funding, the ability of Co-ops to generate
earned income from their collection can effect their ability
to maintain members' prints, and sometimes the organisations'
very existence. Promotional policy and practice can then,
especially in lean times, have significant implications for
the organisation as a whole through its role in encouraging
the use of the collection by hirers, and the visibility for
the sector that comes from this. Promotional policy can include
factors such as whether previewing for hirers is acceptable
(and whether equipment for it is available), the extent to
which Co-op staff can guide hirers unfamiliar with the collection,
and whether or not staff are permitted to create and promote
programmes from the collections. The latter two examples are
sometimes referred to as the problem of selection - the promotion
of a select group of filmmakers over and above others.
As the activity
situated in between filmmaking and screening, and the existence
of a collection and its use, Co-op distribution and the policy
informing it has played a vital role and has a vital role
to play in the availability or not of a substantial portion
of avant-garde film. As times grow no easier for any of these
organisations, this paper will offer an account of their attempts
to resolve several vexing dilemmas while maintaining the Co-operative
spirit.
Dr Peter
Thomas
Post Doctoral Research Fellow on the AHRB funded project 'Independent
Film and Video Distribution in the UK, 1966-2000', University
of Luton
peter.thomas@luton.ac.uk
(peter.thomas-1@sunderland.ac.uk)
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