Browsing by Author "Sibanda, Nyasha"

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    Almost, If Not Quite, As Good as the W.E.: On Sound Apparatus, 1929-1930
    (2017-04-07) Sibanda, Nyasha
    1929 and 1930 were years of concentrated change within the British film exhibition industry. Sound cinema had quickly established itself as the essential attraction of the time, and cinemas throughout the country swiftly mobilised to equip for sound, lest they fall behind the tide. During these years, numerous companies – both domestic and international – vied for control of the nation’s sound apparatus market, with the large resources behind companies such as Western Electric and R.C.A competing with smaller British concerns, as well as established domestic manufacturers such as British Thomson-Houston and British Talking Pictures. Taking the apparatus choices of Birmingham as an example, this paper looks at the various methods by which different manufacturers attempted to distinguish themselves on the sound equipment market, including pricing and advertising strategies. Beyond these aspects, this paper will discuss the potential effects of national and local pride in the choices made by both exhibitors and apparatus vendors, including various “Buy British” or “Buy Local” strategies employed; it also discusses the efforts made by the market leader Western Electric to justify their high prices through the attempted creation of community amongst its customers. Through these lenses, this paper hopes to shed some light on how and why exhibitors installed the apparatus they did, and some oft-overlooked the idiosyncrasies of the British transition to sound.
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    Britain’s Screen Inferiority Complex: Union and Institutional Responses to the Coming of Sound, 1929-35
    (2015-06-18) Sibanda, Nyasha
    Sound cinema came to Britain and the rest of Europe during a period of general decline in national film industry. The end of the First World War had seen capital and investment in British filmmaking decrease, bolstered by the great rise of American cinema during the period. By the middle of the 1920s, American film imports dominated British screens almost completely, with less than five per cent of films shown in the country being of British origin, and the rest being imports from France, Germany, Italy, and, in the vast majority, the United States. The implications on employment and productivity within the industry were stark, but they extended beyond to broader cultural concerns. At a parliamentary reading of what would imminently become the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927, the then President of the Board of Trade Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister asked “Should we be content for a moment if we depended upon foreign literature and upon a foreign Press in this country? […] The greatest proportion of the Press is British, and we should be very anxious if the proportion was in the opposite sense as it is with British films.” This paper examines the relationship between the British film industry, trades union and the Parliament, and the ways in which they dealt with the perceived onslaught of American film product and American cultural values. The paper explores correspondence between the Cinematograph Exhibitors Association (CEA), Federation of British Industries (FBI), Trades Union Congress (TUC), and the Parliamentary Board of Trade.
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    The Conversion to Sound of the Kingsway and the Ideal Cinemas in King's Heath, 1929-1932
    (2016-05-24) Sibanda, Nyasha
    Business records constitute a fundamental source of primary empirical evidence, which illuminate the granular details that collectively form wider regional and national trends. Their rarity has meant that each discovery offers unique perspectives on different cinemagoing communities and time periods. These records have generally been deployed to determine community preferences and attitudes, as they compare with assumptions regarding national tastes (see Poole 1987, Harper 2004 and 2006, Jeacle 2009, James 2013). The Kingsway Cinema was a super cinema constructed in the Birmingham suburb of King’s Heath to serve its local community. A minute book for the Directors’ Meetings of the cinema has survived, and contains records dating from the cinema’s opening in March 1925 through to May 1938. The record contains weekly profit statements for the Kingsway, which can serve as a substitute for admissions figures as a metric for gauging the relative popularity of films shown (when combined with programming advertising from local press), illuminating the taste community of King’s Heath. Yet the minutes also provide a rare insight into the considerations and rationale behind the business decisions made by the cinema’s directors and management. This paper aims to discuss the potential avenues of inquiry that such a record makes available, focusing on the period around the cinema’s conversion to sound, and the unique challenges this turbulent transition presented to the directors of a suburban cinema.
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    Directing The Kingsway Cinema, 1927
    (2016-04-29) Sibanda, Nyasha
    The Kingsway Cinema in King’s Heath, Birmingham, opened in 1925 as a super cinema to serve a localised, habitually attending audience. It showed second-run screenings at low prices, and handily out-performed its only local competitor the Ideal. The minute book of the Directors of the Kingsway Theatre Company reveal a striking and unique picture of what the running of such an establishment entailed, and the considerations made by its Board of Directors. Previous business records for cinemas have been instrumental in the furthering of study into cinemagoing and programming practices (see Poole 1987, Harper 2004 and 2006, Jeacle 2009, James 2013), and their rarity highlights the clear value they hold for researchers in the present. The particular characteristics of the records from the Kingsway, namely their detailed minutes of monthly board meetings, allow for yet another perspective on the operation and function of local cinemas. This paper aims to examine a single year in granular detail. 1927 was a year where the cinema seemed to defy the grim forecasts of the depressed economy, where cinema musicians variously rebel and excel, and where the expansionist ambitions of its Directors were tested amidst the threat of competition. I intend to largely let the records speak for themselves, whilst situating them within the context of the pre-Quota British film exhibition industry. By exploring the richness of this dataset, a more specific and particular picture of the life of late-silent period exhibition might be illuminated.
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    The Evaluation of Audio in Britain in Early Sound Cinema
    (2017-06-30) Sibanda, Nyasha
    The coming of sound was a swift and decisive moment in cinema history. In the space of half a decade, the paradigms for film production and exhibition underwent a sea change largely unparalleled elsewhere in the medium’s history. In Britain, this change was primarily concentrated in the years between 1929 and 1931, when cinemas around the country rapidly transitioned to the new standard. With this new technology serving almost to effectively create a new medium, there grew a need to define it and to understand the effects and meanings of sound in both popular and industrial discourse. This paper intends to discuss the ways in which sound was mediated to the public and the trade in the earliest years of mainstream sound cinema, drawing from local news sources, trade publications and film magazines. During these formative years, sound was discussed both stylistically – such as with early critiques of the musical, vocal acting styles and dialogue – and as a physical phenomenon. Physical qualities discussed were diverse, including the apparatus used for sound recording and theatrical reproduction, the quality of performers’ voices and accents, accommodations made for the deaf and blind, and the ways in which apparatus manufacturers and cinemas advertised the acoustic benefits of their wares. Exploring the priorities of early sound cinema practitioners and critics lends some insight into how sound was understood during these early days of the talkies, and may provide an early touchstone from which later thinking on sound outside of academic discourse might better be understood.
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    Here to Stay: Sound Becomes Inevitable in 1928-1930
    (2017-09-13) Sibanda, Nyasha
    During the years of transition to sound, no-one had any real idea as to what the lasting impact of the new talking picture would be. Amidst confusion and scepticism amongst film producers and exhibitors alike about the apparatuses, systems and rental terms surrounding sound films, opinion was split about the fate of the ever-reliable silent feature. The prospective landscape for silent cinemas was decidedly dire by 1930, but even as recently as 1928, the looming demise of silent cinema was viewed as almost laughable. By September 1929, only 800 cinemas in the country had wired for sound, compared to 3,400 that had not, and despite the desire of many exhibitors to convert their halls for the talkies when the cost of doing so was more manageable, it remained accepted wisdom among many that so long as there remained a substantial number of silent halls in Britain, film producers and renters would continue to offer silent films to satisfy this demand. This was not, however, the opinion of all concerned. This paper examines the shift in perception and opinion about the fate of silent cinema during the key years of the transition to sound in Britain. It will highlight the disparate voices of concern and optimism evident during this period, as those involved throughout the film production, rental and exhibition sectors shifted their impressions of sound cinema from it being a temporary passing novelty, to it representing the complete supplantation of silent cinema. In the process, the paper will aim to highlight some new perspectives on the tensions between British and American cinema sensibilities, and the fear of Americanisation.
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    In Their Own Words: Nostalgia, Trivia and Memory in Local Cinema History
    (2017-06-21) Sibanda, Nyasha
    Britain has a strong history of popular local cinema history, particularly as explored by amateur historians and non-academics. While they vary in their modes of address, they share a common emphasis on collating empirical information about exhibition practices within a town or region, in order to create a sense of individual identity. The relationship between a locality and its cinema history is thus constructed as a product of that specific place and community, rather than a non-specific expression of national or global practices. The nature of international film distribution naturally means that local cinema histories are told in the contexts of larger trends, but prominence is always given to the effects they have on localities. Part of the reason for this emphasis on highly localised issues comes from their nature as non-academic pieces of historiography; without the need for express academic rigour, the need for contextualisation is limited largely to providing a basic understanding for the reader. These histories typically speak to locals, or those with specific interest in these geographical spaces, rather than to those with a more general interest in cinema history. This paper discusses the relationship between the academic and non-academic historiography of cinema and exhibition history. It explores the reasons why local cinema histories are written, and the functions they serve as markers of community and identity. As time marches onwards, the ability for scholars to access primary accounts and materials related particularly to early local cinema history becomes ever more difficult; this paper seeks to argue for the value and potential usage of popular cinema histories as both compendia of esoteric regional historical data, and primary memory works. The author’s work on the early history of sound cinema in Birmingham will also serve to illustrate potential uses of such material.
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    Invasion: Legitimate Language and the Coming of Sound in the Nottingham Evening Post, 1928-1930
    (2015-04-24) Sibanda, Nyasha
    Historians tend to place the arrival of sound cinema within the public experience in 1927, with the American premiere of The Jazz Singer. Yet British audiences did not hear the talkies until the film’s London premiere in 1928, and sound did not reach Nottingham until a year after that. For most British audiences, particularly those outside of London, the coming of sound was almost entirely witnessed through the reportage of the press. In this presentation, I explore the ways in which provincial newspapers discussed the coming of the talkies, focusing in particular on stories from the Nottingham Evening Post between 1928 and 1930. Sound cinema in the early years was almost entirely an American phenomenon, and worries brewed about the damaging effects of American English. The influx of talkies from Hollywood served as a concentrated and unprecedented challenge to linguistic hegemony. This presentation argues that a nationalist narrative directly informed the reporting of sound cinema during the late 1920s. I will explore this idea in two ways. Firstly, with an exploration of the rhetoric and identity politics of the mainstream press, discussing these characteristics as they appear in reporting on the talkies in the Nottingham Evening Post. Secondly, with a focus on the question of language specifically, using a Bourdieusian framework of linguistic economics as a mode of understanding, and touching upon issues of class and social power.
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