CINEMAGOING AS A CONDITIONAL PART OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Abstract

This paper is part of the recent shift within the ‘New Cinema History’ from the attention for the film text to a broader consideration of the social and cultural history of cinema. In the last years, research did not only concentrate on the production and meanings of the pictures, but it also saw an increased interest in the distribution, exploitation and consumption of film. Interest for film as a consumable good has come from various disciples such as Cultural Studies, sociology, anthropology, political economy, geography and oral history. This study is based on oral accounts. Research on memories of going to the movies has contributed significantly to defining the spatial and social conditions of the cinematic experience. Yet this illuminating bottom-up approach of lived cinema cultures is mostly limited to the Anglo-Saxon experience of American films in English spoken film markets. As part of a larger research project on cinema culture in Flanders, 62 inhabitants of Ghent, Belgium, were interviewed concerning their moviegoing habits from the 1930s to the late 1970s. The oral history project aimed to analyze the significance of cinemagoing in a local community defined by class, language and a ‘pillarized’ society. The main research question in this paper is how particular was going to the movies in a local film market not overwhelmingly defined by American distributors or Hollywood movies and what were the sociocultural mechanisms behind moviegoing. In doing so we look at the entwinement of the experienced everyday life with the memories of choosing a movie theatre, remembering a movie and recollections of choosing cinema as leisure. Memory reclamation of local moviegoing as non-textual empirical research can define a parallel media history of cinema culture in Ghent and supplement the international research on cinemagoing experiences.

Keywords:

• New Cinema History
• cinemagoing
• oral history
• memory
• everyday life
• Belgium

Notes

1. The research project is called ‘Gent Kinemastad. A multimethodological research project on the history of film exhibition, programming and cinemagoing in Ghent and its suburbs (1896–2010) as a case within a comparative New Cinema History perspective’ (BOF/Ghent University, 2009–2011).

2. In 1930, Ghent had a population of 170,358 inhabitants; there were 29 active cinemas with 18,601 seats and a mean capacity of 641 per cinema. In 1960 Ghent had a population of 159,056 inhabitants with 39 active cinemas and 21,356 seats and a mean capacity of 548 per theatre.

3. The respondents were categorized into residence (32.3 percent centre, 45.2 percent districts and 22.5 percent suburbs); sex (56.5 percent male and 43.5 percent female), age (16.2 percent over 80, 53.2 percent between 65 and 79 years and 30.6 percent younger than 65) and ideological background based on their own accounts (43.5 percent catholic, 8.1 percent socialist, 9.7 percent liberal and 38.7 percent neutral).