Abstract
This chapter reports on a project on historical film exhibition and consumption in Flanders (Belgium), more specifically on non-urban and rural spheres for cinema culture, using film exhibition as a context to better understand the experiences of cinema-going. The empirical focus is on small towns and villages in the province of Antwerp, based on archival analysis and oral history interviews. In a contextual part, we sketch the development of non-urban cinema infrastructures. The main part draws from an oral history project on cinema practices and discourses of villagers and town people. We argue for a dynamic picture of ‘multiple’ modernities, where the accelerated modernity of big-city cinema culture is not contrasted with, but situated in, a continuum with ‘decelerated’ forms of modernity across non-urban and rural areas.
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- 1.
The case study is part of a larger joint University of Antwerp and Ghent University research project ‘The Enlightened City: Screen Culture Between Ideology, Economics and Experience. A Study on the Social Role of Film Exhibition and Film Consumption in Flanders (1895–2004) in Interaction with Modernity and Urbanization’, funded by the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO) (2005–2008).
- 2.
There have been several waves of integrating different villages and towns into larger entities; therefore, we don’t go into the exact (higher) numbers in historical perspective, as they vary considerably.
- 3.
The province of Antwerp has the city of Antwerp as capital. In the text, we refer to the city when we write ‘Antwerp’ and to the province of Antwerp when we write ‘province’.
- 4.
Various politico-ideological groups in society organized the different stages in citizens’ life within the same pillar of institutions. The main protagonists in this ‘pillarized’ society were of a Catholic, Socialist, Liberal, and Flemish-nationalist signature.
- 5.
We hereby thank the researcher-PhD student Gert Willems and the bachelor communication studies students participating in the research at the University of Antwerp: Vickie Adriaensens, Catherine Asselman, Inge Baelen, Lode Buelens, Sarah Coppens, Evan Goossens, Sara Ichau, Sven Lambrecht, Ilya Maes, Leen Matthé, Kenneth Peeters, Mia Prce, Bruno Smets, Stijn Van Craenendonck, Kristof Welslau, and Laurens Weyten.
- 6.
The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using the software program Atlas-ti. On a first level, we structured the interviews according to age group, in order to be able to investigate the evolution in their stories. On a second level, we reorganized their memories according to a selection of themes, such as choice of movie theatre, frequency, companionship, information about specific films, and reasons for cinema-going.
- 7.
We do not go into the impact of the religious and ideological (pillarized) organization of cinema on audience experiences. See Biltereyst et al. (2012).
- 8.
This discourse was also found with respondents in the city of Antwerp. In an urban context, cinema as leisure activity had obtained the status of a cheap and popular mass-entertainment medium, an activity for all ages, sexes, and classes, as opposed to other leisure activities in the urban context, like dance halls, bars, or opera, aimed at specific segments of the population.
- 9.
One notable exception is the Roma cinema, which although situated in Borgerhout was considered to be a ‘chic’ cinema.
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Meers, P., Biltereyst, D. (2018). Belgian Film Culture Beyond the Big City: Cinema-Going in the Provincial and Rural Periphery of Antwerp. In: Treveri Gennari, D., Hipkins, D., O'Rawe, C. (eds) Rural Cinema Exhibition and Audiences in a Global Context. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66344-9_8
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