Films that Work

Only available in hardback: ISBN 978 90 8964 012 3The history of industrial films – an orphangenre of twentieth-century cinemacomposed of government-produced andindustrially sponsored movies that soughtto achieve the goals of their sponsors,rather than the creative artists involved –seems to have left no trace in filmic culturaldiscourse. At its height the industrial filmindustry employed thousands, producedseveral trade journals and festival circuits,engaged with giants of twentieth-centuryindustry like Shell and AT & T, and featuredthe talents of iconic actors and directors such as Buster Keaton, John Griersonand Alain Resnais. This is the firstfull-length book, anthology, and annotatedbibliography to analyse the industrial filmand its remarkable history. Exploring thepotential of the industrial film to uncoverrenewed and unexplored areas of mediastudies, this remarkable volume bringstogether renowned scholars such asRick Prelinger and Thomas Elsaesser in adiscussion of the radical potential and newpossibilities in considering the history ofthis unexplored corporate medium.

‘Industrials’ and ‘educations’, promotional and corporate films and videos, like amateur film, have in recent decades begun to receive attention, but barely a dozen books can be cited which seek to place these films in a broad context. FILMS THAT WORK offers, for the first time, a distinct theoretical framework in which to consider this archive of non-canonical non-fiction film. More than that, it makes a rare contribution to bridging the chasm between English language and continental European film studies -- not just the Shell Film Unit but the Dutch side of its activities; not just sponsorship in the US but film as vocational training in France; not just film and Taylorism but also European uses of film to propagandise it. In short, this is one of the few books to give equal – if not additional -- weight to non-fiction film activity in continental Western Europe. And FILMS THAT WORK achieves this in no dry and inaccessible manner. On the contrary, fascinating nuggets are to be found throughout: 150 copies of newsreels made pre-WW II by the Czech Bat‘a shoe company and sent out to its 800 shops, Switzerland as corporate films' 'Hollywood', transvestite Krupps employees at a works-party filmed in 1936. FILMS THAT WORK marks a step-change in the study of non-fiction cinema outside the documentary canon. Professor Brian Winston Lincoln Professor of Communications University of Lincoln |Industrial films have been around since the first decades of the Twentieth Century, but until recently they have largely been ignored in cinema scholarship. Films that Work is a masterful contribution to the growing literature in this area, and it does more than fill in the gap. Sensitive to both aesthetic practice and social context, its essays offer a comprehensive introduction to the sponsored film’s international history. This brilliantly researched and engagingly written collection is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the vital place of the moving image in industrial relations. Anna McCarthy Associate Professor and Associate Chair Department of Cinema Studies, NYU Coeditor, Social Text |Films That Work represents the leading edge of a new era in media research. The history of nontheatrical films - productions that greatly outnumbered the commercial features we have long studied - is now being written in scholarly form. Hediger and Vonderau‘s anthology of new essays sets a high standard, demonstrating how significant this research can be and how much we have yet to learn about the thousands of such films awaiting rediscovery in archives and private collections. -- Dan Streible, New York University

Patrick Vonderau is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Halle, Germany. Vinzenz Hediger is a professor of cinema studies at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt where he directs the Graudate Research Training Program "Configurations of film". He is a founding member of the Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories, a co-founder and former steering committee member of NECS - European Network of Cinema and Media Studies (www.necs.org) and a member of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature. His publications include "Films That Work Harder. The Circulations of Industrial Film" (forthcoming from AUP) and "Nostalgia for the Coming Attraction. American Movie Trailers and the Culture of Film Consumption" (forthcoming from Columbia UP).