Trading Culture Conference - Global

Approximately 50 speakers considered the role of cinema and televsion in national life and minority culture, addressing questions of cultural identity and the search for new markets and audiences in periods of economic and political change. These developments were placed in the context of World Trade Organisation talks and the tension between trade liberalisation and cultural diversity.

Two films were screened: The Terrorist (Santosh Sivan, India, 1998) and The Circle (Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2001). Seminar sessions included two specialist panels entitled 'Nations and Regions: A UK Case Study' and 'Television Programme Format Trade in the Asia Pacific Region', as well as presentations by academics and others from institutions worldwide, including:

• Cultural Hybridity and Maghreb Cinema
• The U.S. Art Film Market in the 1960s
• Too Many Solitudes? Globalization and the Challenge of Communications Regulation - Lessons from Canada
• At the Edge of Empire
• Is Mulan a Cross-dresser? Disney's Cultural Sensitivity and the Exportation of Animated Stories around the World
• Challenging 'Free Trade' in Culture - Issues, Problems and Prospects
• USA vs EU: The Media Wars
• Negotiating the Exotic in Latin American Cinema
• Rule, Cool, and Ghoul Britannia: Varieties of the British Cinema Export Brand
• Cultural Exchange and Mmemory in the Archers' I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)
• No Longer Indigenous: The International Blockbuster
• Standards, Culture, Services: Tradeable Television and Changing Conceptions of Broadcasting Policy
• Internationalism and the Epics of Samuel Bronston
• Crossing Over: Exporting Indigenous Heritage to the USA
• The Bourgeoisification of a 'Vulgar' Popular Cultural Form: Nang Nak and Thai Cinema's Current 'Renaissance'
• From Cold War Paraphernalia to Esoteric Exotica: Eastern Europe's Hard Sells
• Into Shangrila: Making Survivor in the Tibetan Liberated Zone
• Billy Elliot: Promoting British Cinema in the USA
• German Nationality/Hollywood Patriotism: The Transatlantic Tales of Wolfgang Petersen, Roland Emmerich and Oskar Schindler
• SOS Eisberg: A Frosty Epic Set in Greenland
• The Global Adventures of Mickey Mouse and the Rugrats: The Role and Characteristics of Global Children's Television Channels
• Paradise Lost? Film, Mobility and Jamaican Identities
• Pirate Spotting: Defining Formats Legally Speaking
• Themed Television Channels in Europe: Specialized Entertainment Services and Imagined Lifestyle Communities
• Discovering the World: Globalization and Television Documentary
• Changing Power Relations in International Television Industries: From Factory to Franchise
• The Political Economy of Fraternity: The Cultural Commons in the Age of Convergence
• The Rebirth and International Circulation of Brazilian Cinema Since the Mid 1990s
• Exchanging Adventure: British, American and UnAmerican Involvement in TV Costume Adventure Series in the 1950s
• Export Quality: Italian Producers' Search for Wider Markets, 1950-70
• Latin America Cinema in the 90s: Cultural Identity and International Visibility
• How Scottish Is It?: The Indigenous Cultural Engagement and International Circulation of Recent Scottish Film
• Interactive Video for Awareness
• Between Expectation and Wonder: The Experience of Viewing Films Cross-Culturally
• 'Vacuous Internationalism' - Anthony Asquith and the 'mid-Atlantic film' of the 1960s
• Gaumont British in America, 1934-36
• 'The Hollywood of Latin America': Miami as Regional Centre in Television Trade
• Selling British Television

Development Issues
Culture.

The international trade in film was established in the early part of the twentieth century. By the start of the twenty-first century, this trade began to take on an increasingly global flavour through television programmes and a re-working of the concept of 'export' in the era of satellite and internet.

The AHRB Centre for British Film and Television Studies, created in October, 2000 with five years' funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board, aims to enhance and extend the recent growth in high level academic research on British film and television. The Centre is a partnership between Birkbeck College, University of London; University of Brighton - South East Film and Video Archive; British Film Institute; Central St Martins School of Art; University of Exeter - Bill Douglas Centre; Royal College of Art; Sheffield Hallam University; and University of Ulster.