Friday, 10 January 2014

A Producer from 6 Continents- Unit 1

After the difficulties of yesterday, this turned out too be a much more manageable task. First I quickly realized that Antarctica don't really have a film industry, so it would be difficult to find an antarctic producer. I also found out that Oceania and Australia are really tied together in film and much more. So that puts us on 6 producers. The initial stage of finding one producer that is worth researching was the first difficulty, but I think it got easier. Here are my notes. 
So here are the people I found.

Africa
During the colonial period, Africa was portrayed as having little history, just as a generally exotic place, with notable exceptions such as 'Les Statues Meurant Aussi'. After the colonial period more films were made that explored African heritage and stories. In Nigeria cinema really took off with a value of about $3.5 billion and the nickname 'Nollywood'. Most films made in Nollywood remain straight to video.                                                                                 One notable producer is Teco Benson. He started out as an actor in 1994, but quickly became involved in writing, directing, editing and production. His film 'Explosion' represented Nollywood in Israel in 2006.

Asia
Indian film and Bollywood are among the biggest film producers in the world. However after hearing about the rise in Chinese cinema, I thought I may research that. It was after the second world war when cinema was under Japanese control that Chinese cinema began to flourish. Now it is also one of the biggest film industries in the world, in 2013 their gross box being worth $3.6 billion.             Run Run Shaw seems to be a prominent name in the industry. After opening a chain of cinemas in China and Malaysia, he started producing films as well as T.V with his brother in a company they called the Shaw Brothers. He became a mogul, on IMDb having his name as producer to 323 credits. He is credited with bringing Kung Fu to the mainstream audiences. The project  that he was involved in that most western people will recognize is 'Blade Runner' (1982).

North America
American cinema is the most well known to the average British cinema goer. Its film industry has been dubbed Hollywood, and is the 3rd most prolific creator of films after Bollywood and India.                                  I have chosen to mention Steven Spielberg again as he is the highest grossing producer in recent USA cinema. at $6,468.3 million. He started out as a director, creating classics such as 'Jaws'. He founded Dreamworks studio with Stacey Snider. He continues to be a director and be involved in a high number of cinema releases.



South America
In the early 1940's and 1950's Latin American films were popular in Hollywood. This popularity has waned slightly, but South America still exports a lot of talent, such as directors Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonzo Curon.                                     A notable producer is Alejandro González Iñárritu. Starting out as a radio host, then moving on to direction. In the 1990's he set up his own production company called Zeta Films. He produced his own films in 2000, and was nominated for an Oscar for 'Babel' (2007). 




Australia/ Oceania
Australia was quick off the mark in creating film. It boomed in the 1910's only to decline in the 1920's. It slowly built itself up, but not back to the same level, finding it hard to compete with American film, as most English speaking countries do. Many of its stars such as Cate Blanchett defect to Hollywood.                                                                                                    One producer is Antony I. Ginnane. He stated out studying law, then set up a small distribution company. He is most well known for his art house films. He attended Cannes with 'High Tide' in 1987. 



Europe
The Lumiere brothers disputably created film in Europe. As I am British I am going to focus on British cinema in this section. The Golden age was the 1940's with British films very popular around the world. Britain continues to have a fairly respectable output, managing to produce Blockbusters such as 'James Bond' and 'Harry Potter'.                           I am going to look at David Heyman, who struck gold in managing to be producer for the 'Harry Potter' franchise. He started out as a production assistant, then became a producer, founding Heyday Films. He has other big films on his hands such as 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas' (2008) and 'Gravity' (2013).

So these are some Producers from around the world. I notice the domination of white men again, but not exclusively this time. I may have to work on getting a female producer into this blog. As per the trend, this took me longer than expected (by about half an hour) but I found it less stressful than last time because my aim was more precise, so it was easier to look when I knew what I was looking for. I think next time I am going to zoom in on the lives of two producers, and hopefully one of them will be female. I will probably choose two British producers.

Thank you for reading.

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