Theorising the cultural impacts of film distribution in the cinema and beyond
This thesis explores the links between film cultures and film distribution. What happens to film culture when a film is passed between friends on a USB, or downloaded from a cyberlocker, or purchased on a copied DVD at a local grocery store? Beyond the cinema and the major commercial players of the formal sector, film now lives in a multiplex of different access points, from iTunes downloads, legal BitTorrent releases, host-your-own community screenings and free YouTube streams. New forms of distribution beyond the dominant commercial players are not just restructuring the film industry, they are presenting theoretical challenges to film scholars. As disruptions and innovations in the industry, these trends speak to the research questions: How to conceptualise new forms of distribution not previously subjected to scholarly analysis? How do audiences in Australia access film today? How does the distribution of a film influence the terms of its use and reception by audiences? This thesis takes a multi-method path to interrogate the cultural-economic exchanges within the distribution screenscape and a diversity of distribution circuits. Case studies include Australia’s formal distribution sector, Sydney Film Festival analysed as a distributor and new and disruptive digital circuits such as the BitTorrent Now e-store. Combining industrial analysis, interviews with distributors and ethnographic observation, this thesis contributes to new knowledge in three major ways. First, throughout film studies, distribution has been primarily analysed as an industrial phenomenon. I attune distribution research to the phenomenon of film culture, showing how distribution and exhibition play into the contingent life of film culture. Second, I expose emerging forms of distribution to scholarly examination, namely cinema-on-demand, crowdfunding and e-stores that legally use file-sharing technologies to the advantage of film producers. Third, the thesis develops a new conceptualisation of distribution, moving from the historically dominant commercial conceptualisation of distribution – the sale of films through various platforms, territories and ancillary markets – to a view of distribution as the means of a film’s arrival in a distribution screenscape dominated by informal and ancillary circuits.
Digital distribution, Film distribution, Australian cinema
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