Film Studios: Histories, Evolution, Innovation, Futures

An ERC-funded conference exploring film studios as a global phenomenon held at the Watershed, Bristol, 5-7 June 2023

Watershed 1, Canon’s Road, Bristol BS1 5TX

Register here by 18^th May

MONDAY 5^TH JUNE

1000-1100	Registration
1100-1230	Welcome and Keynote 1	Noa Steimatsky, ‘Displaced in Cinecittà: Historiographic itineraries’
1230-1330	Lunch
1330-1500	Panel session 1	Panel 1A: Studios and filmmaking after war and partition Francesco Di Chiara and Paolo Noto, ‘Supplying (the means of) production. Studios as producers in post-war Italy’ Amrita Biswas, ‘Post-partition cine-ecology: Calcutta’s film production culture (1947)’  Panel 1B: British studios before 1930 Tony Fletcher, ‘Sound before Blackmail: Clapham, Wembley and the production of short sound films before 1929’ Simon Brown, ‘Hepworth studios at Walton’ Ian Christie, ‘North London studios before 1920’
1500-1530	Break
1530-1700	Panel session 2	Panel 2A: Contemporary animation studios: Brand identity, technology and representation  Helen Haswell, ‘The “Formerly-Great Pixar Studios”: Brand identity and perception in the post-acquisition Pixar’ Eve Benhamou, ‘Crafting a studio identity in the digital era: Hand-made appeals, analogue artistry and cartoon saloon’ Maliha Miriam, ‘A Productions and JoJo and Gran Gran: The impact of women within the British animation production pipeline’ Panel 2B: Film studios in twentieth-century China Ting Luo, ‘Self-referentiality as self-promotion: Mingxing Studio’s meta-films in early Chinese cinema (1922-1932)’ Weihong Bao, ‘The productivity of life: Film studios in 1930s Shanghai’ Lin Feng, ‘Dancing in chains: Shanghai film dubbing studio and the creative performance in the Mao Era’
1700	End of day 1

TUESDAY 6^TH JUNE

0945-1115	Panel session 3	Panel 3A: Animation studios Till Grahl, ‘Women at the DEFA animation studio, Dresden’ Pavel Skopal, ‘“Poor Guys from the Second Floor”. Art worlds and working routine in a Czechoslovak animation film studio’ Megumi Hayakawa, ‘Apprenticeship, workshop and community: Otogi Pro and its impact on Japanese animation’  Panel 3B: Beyond the studio Yuqian Yan, ‘In the open air: Rethinking the meaning of control in and beyond studio spaces in 1920s China’ Connor Ryan, ‘Nollywood, Lagos, and people as infrastructure’
1115-1145	Break
1145-1315	Panel session 4	Panel 4A: Excavating studio histories Polly Rose, ‘Eleanor Avenue and Lilian Way: Mapping the footprint of the Buster Keaton Studio, 1920-28’ Morgan Lefeuvre, ‘The Pagnol studios in Marseille: A singular experience of decentralisation of French film production’ Lawrence Webb, ‘Reconstructing the MPO studio: Advertising, film, and visual culture in sixties New York’  Panel 4B: Stories from ‘HollyWoodge’ – film studios in state-socialist Poland Ewa Ciszewska, ‘How it is like to establish film animation studio? On the beginnings of the Se-Ma-For studio’ Emil Sowiński, ‘The Educational Film Studio and the Policy of Film Debuts in the 1970s and 1980s’ Konrad Klejsa and Jarosław Grzechowiak, ‘Feature film studio in Lodz in the 1980s in the lights of internal documents from film production units’
1315-1415	Lunch
1415-1545	Panel session 5	Panel 5A: British studios Geoff Brown, ‘How not to rebuild a film studio: Gaumont-British’s botched expansion at Shepherd’s Bush’ Caroline Ness, ‘Couture in post-war British film production’ Steven Roberts, ‘Staging Richard III: Studio history, nation and adaptation’  Panel 5B: Virtual filmmaking Tom Livingstone, ‘Film studios and new technologies: Virtual Production’ Michael Samuel, ‘TVAI: Generative media and AI television programming — a case study of Mismatch Media and Nothing, Forever (2023-)’ Soumaya Snoussi, ‘South Korean film industry, stepping into the new age of virtual production studios’
1545-1615	Break
1615-1700	Plenary sessionEnd of day 2	STUDIOTEC VR session

WEDNESDAY 7^TH JUNE

0945-1115	Panel session 6	Panel 6A: Transnational studios and filmmaking Stephen Morgan, ‘Pagewood, 1935-1952: Tracing the transnational fortunes of an Australian film studio’ María Paz Peirano and Alejandro Kelly, ‘Between the national and the transnational: Commercial and industrial links between Chilefilms and Argentina Sono Film in the 1940s’ River (Yilin) Jiang, ‘From the studio to the street: The intersectional moment between Classical Hollywood and the French New Wave in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (1963)’ Panel 6B: Studio working life and practices 1 Adina Brădeanu, ‘The double life of a film studio: Professional identity and everyday life at the “Alexandru Sahia” documentary studio’ Francesca Tesi, ‘Stabilisation of Alessandro Blasetti’s troupe in Fascist Cinecittà’ Alex Boutellier and Panos Raptis, ‘The future is Unreal: How the intermediality of Virtual Production is changing professional practice’
1115-1145	Break
1145-1315	Panel session 7	Panel 7A: Developing new studios and film industries Abdulrahman Alghannam, ‘Film studios and locations in the GCC countries: Current trends and challenges’  Anchalee Chaiworaporn, ‘Branding the studios with New Audiences: The case of Thailand’s Five Star Production and GTH’  Musab Alamri, ‘The status of film studios in Saudi Arabia: A producers’ perspective’  Panel 7B: Studio working life and practices 2  Jonathan Driskell, ‘Stars and Strikes: Community, Commitment and Conflict in Malay Film Studios in the 1950s-1960s’  Llewella Chapman, ‘”A Central wardrobe”: Mapping wardrobe and costume work in British studios through magazines and trade papers, 1946-1950’  Stephen Andriano-Moore and Li Chuan Evelyn Mai, ‘Enlight Movie Word: Challenges and implications of Virtual Production, Artificial Intelligence, and Automation in the Chinese film studio’
1315-1415	Lunch
1415-1545 1600	Keynote 2 Closing remarks End of conference	Brian Jacobson, ‘The studio of extractions and resource integration’