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Delivering Dreams: A Century of British Film Distribution
£14.40£16.10 (-11%)
Film Distributors are the unsung heroes of cinema. Without them, the film industry would grind to a halt. Drawing on the archives of the Film Distributors Association (FDA), as well as on interviews with leading British distributors of today, Delivering Dreams tells the, largely unacknowledged, story of how films were, and are, brought to British cinema-goers. It profiles some of the most flamboyant and controversial figures involved in UK distribution over the last 100 years, ranging from the founders of huge companies to visionaries who have launched small art house labels. Geoffrey Macnab also explores how the sector has reacted to a rapidly changing market and technological environment, from the transition to sound in the late 1920s to the spectre of TV in the 1950s and the move to digital in the 2000s. Ranging from the films of Charlie Chaplin to The King s Speech, and published to coincide with the centenary of the FDA s creation in December 1915, this book highlights the crucial role that distributors have played in maintaining the solid foundations of the British film industry.
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Additional information
| Publisher | I.B.Tauris (18 Dec. 2015) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 272 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1784534897 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1784534899 |
| Dimensions | 2.54 x 2.54 x 2.54 cm |
by Wingate
It was not until I opened this book that I realised that this book had been written to celebrate the centenary of the Film Distributors Association.It paints a picture of the poor under paid distributor as the most important link in the film chain.It isn’t till late on in the book when quoting a speech by Alan Parker that the book tacitly admits that it is in distribution where the real money lies.
Up until the 1950s this book is very interesting.Then it goes downhill very rapidly.Firstly it deals far too much with America.Secondly it really does my fully explain the reasons for the break up of the Odeon-ABC duopoly.Furthermore it doesn’t explain the fact that cinemas now have the same textbooks philosophy as the state’s.So that for example 2013 saw a slump in admissions because there was not one film that achieved a gross of £50million.So whatever independent distributors did was largely irrelevant.I note that the author makes the general claim that distributors paid for cinemas going digital.So does that mean they paid for each cinema to buy a digital projector.I find that hard to believe.Though given that they now only have to pay £60 instead of £1000 per copy they should have substantial monies in hand.No mention of the previous inflexibility of distributors.If a film was rented for child audiences they insisted it was shown in the evening even if there would be a smaller audience.No mention of the stringent terms they extract from exhibitors from playing the blockbusters.
by TC
Delivering Dreams is a must read for anyone interested in the world of film and the film industry. The book celebrates 100 years of the men and women who have been delivering films to a UK audience. This is not a dry read, but rather an entertaining journey though the arrival of talkies, television, home video and into digital. It also outlines some of the marketing tricks undertaken to persuade us to go along to see a film including Star Wars, Dr No and Trainspotting. All in all, informative, enjoyable and compulsory for film buffs!