Films That Work Harder: The Circulation of Industrial Film (Film Culture in Transition)

What unleashed the forces of global capitalism which continue to shape the world that we live in? Economists and economic historians variously point to innovations in logistics and trade, the emergence of a new set of business-friendly values and the emergence of new forms of applied knowledge in early modernity to solve this riddle. This book focuses on the moving image as a factor of economic development. In a series of in-depth cases studies at the intersection of film and media studies, science and technology studies and economic and social history, Films That Work Harder: The Circulations of Industrial Film presents an in-depth, global perspective on the dynamic relationship between film, industrial organization and economic development. Bringing together new research from leading scholars from Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, this book combines the state of the art in the field with an agenda for a future research. Provides a in-depth, global perspective on the complex, dynamic relationship of film, visual and organizational rhetoric and economic development. It brings together the leading scholars in a burgeoning new field of film studies with original work not previously presented elsewhere. Contributes towards the further development of an exciting new interdisciplinary research paradigm at the intersection of film studies, economic history, science and technology studies and the social sciences.

Vinzenz Hediger is professor of cinema studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, where he directs the Graduate Research Training Program Configurations of film (www.konfigrationen-des-films.de). His publications include Films that Work. Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media (Amsterdam University Press 2009, with Patrick Vonderau) and Essays zur Filmphilosophie (Fink 2015, with Lorenz Engell, Oliver Fahle and Christiane Voss). He is a co-founder of NECS – European Network of Cinema and Media Studies (www.necs.org) and the founding editor of Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (www.zfmedienwissenschaft.de) Florian Hoof is currently Professor of Media Systems and Media Organization at Paderborn University. He is the author of Angels of Efficiency. A Media History of Consulting (Oxford University Press, 2020) and co-author of Culture, Technology, and Process in ‘Media Theories’: Toward a Shift in the Understanding of Media in Organizational Research. In: >cite>Organization, 2019, Vol. 26(5), http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350508419855702. Yvonne Zimmermann is Professor of Media Studies at Philipps-University Marburg. Recent books include the co-authored Advertising and the Transformation of Screen Cultures>/cite> (AUP 2021) and the co-edited Films That Work Harder: The Global Circulations of Industrial Cinema (AUP 2023). She is the editor of a special issue on Asta Nielsen, the film star system and the introduction of the long feature film in Early Popular Visual Culture (2021). Scott Anthony is currently Deputy Head of Research & Public History at the Science Museum Group. His books include Shell: Art and Advertising (2021), Public Relations and the Making of Modern Britain (2012), The Projection of Britain: A History of the GPO Film Unit (2011) and Night Mail (2007). The Story of Propaganda Film (2024) is forthcoming with BFI/Bloomsbury.