Going To The Movies In German-Occupied Territory In World War II
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | During the Second World War cinema attendance boomed in the whole of Europe, including the German-occupied countries (Vande Winkel & Welch 2011). The Reich’s cultural policy conceptualised the “New Europe” as a huge market for its film output (Martin 2016) and tailored the distribution system in the occupied countries accordingly (Vande Winkel 2017). In some occupied regions, such as the occupied Eastern Territories, competition was wiped out by granting German productions a virtual monopoly. In most occupied countries American films were banned, but local productions and/or films from befriended German countries were still allowed (Vande Winkel & Welch 2011). So filmgoers still had a selection to choose from but this selection was shaped by interventions by the occupying powers. We are interested in the interplay between audience preferences, structures of four selected cinema markets and interventions by the occupying administration. In our presentation we will reflect on methodological issues that we encountered while working on comparative analyses of cinema cultures in Brussels, The Hague, Krakow and Brno during World War II. What variables should we use for our comparison? What conceptual frameworks do we need to understand film popularity under occupation? How should we handle POPSTAT results collected from occupied cities? In what way do these results tell us something about actual preferences audiences might have had? |
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