Film business and audience formation in Buenos Aires during the classic cinema period

Abstract

Studies of audiences linked to the spectacle of the big screen during the first half of the twentieth century propose the inclusion of social actors who were not sufficiently visible in the traditional historiography of cinema. Along with this, practices, texts, processes or emotions -that originated in the context of the experience of "cinema going", which undoubtedly meant much more than just going to see films-, acquire relevance. This conference focuses on the evolution of the film business in the city of Buenos Aires in those years, with an emphasis on the tensions that arose between the desires of Hollywood companies, trying to impose marketing formats that referred to certain concepts and models of what it is and how one should go to the cinema, and local agents who tried to negotiate certain modalizations of these commercial and social rules, finally articulating with the demands of the traditions of the popular Buenos Aires spectacles. The "continuous" system, the "system by sections" or the "monster programme" are some of the commercial practices that proposed different formations of audiences.