Screen Industries in East-Central Europe

"This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This book provides an alternative perspective into the audiovisual and media industries of eastern and central Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. In doing so, it offers insight into the ways the screen industries of small nations are positioned in and respond to globalization and digitalization. Petr Szczepanik suggests that for these digital peripheries , globalization and digitalization are as yet incomplete, stumbling processes, closely intertwined with and mediated by deeply local circumstances and players. Instead of a top-down economic or political overview, this book places central focus on the lived realities of producers as key initiators, facilitators, and cultural intermediaries. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it looks closely at how their agency is circumscribed by the limited scale and peripheral positioning of the markets in which they operate, and how they struggle to come to terms with these constraints through their business strategies, creative thinking and professional self-perceptions. Each of the seven chapters pro