How Films Get to Us

Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution supplements the occasionally overwhelming focus on representation with the necessary context of accessing film texts. When cinema multiplexes and art cinemas face the problem of an ageing audience and cinematic experience is no longer the centre of film culture, the main question becomes: How do films access audiences, and what does this depend on? Ramon Lobato, a researcher of informal film industries and media, reminds us of the cultural, social and economic inventiveness of informal film distribution circles, and its transnational development. Lobato claims that the distribution policy should be taken as seriously as the textual policy, which opens an interesting relation to film as a trans-form; which is in a way both material and not, taped and watched, filmed expensively and cheap to buy, complexly built and easily accessible.

The integral (Slovenian) version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!