British Film Institute Screen Industries in East-Central Europe (International Screen Industries)

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Petr Szczepanik provides an in-depth study of the history and contemporary landscape of screen media industries in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. Drawing on first-hand research in the world of the various producers who operate in the digital peripheries of Central and Eastern European, he offers broad insights into the ways the screen industries of small nations are positioned in and respond to globalization and digitalization. Szczepanik's shows how film, television, and online video are industries with still distinct structures and professional cultures, but which have nevertheless been converging, affected by the same globalizing forces such as transnational video on demand services and platforms, and whose producers move across inter-industry boundaries with increasing ease. The book explores small media markets through attention to the role of producers as key cultural mediators, looking closely at how their agency is circumscribed by the limited scope and peripheral positioning of the markets in which they operate, and how they struggle to overcome these obstacles through their professional identities, business models, and adaptations to technological change and transnational competition.