Screen Agencies as Cultural Intermediaries:Negotiating and Shaping Cultural Policy for the Film and TV Industries within Selected Small Nations

这项研究提供了第一个大规模的比较研究的屏幕机构在七个小欧洲国家。它评估了它们对我们电影和电视产业产出的影响，并从这些国家及其创意部门的先前研究中发展出来。它深化和扩展了我们对创造性内容的制作以及文化政策的形成和制定方式的批判性理解。筛选机构作为研究对象的价值在于它们对一个国家的经济和文化目标的干预。通过它们的决策、资源分配和支助方案，它们有可能对本国的文化资产和产出行使重大权力。然而，这种力量及其应用的后果在很大程度上没有得到学术界的承认，没有受到电影专业人士的质疑，观众也看不见。电影机构的目的是提高对电影行业的公共资助的有效性和效率，这个行业以其独特的公共价值形式而闻名，但固有的风险。代理模式已经成为一种合法的和可转让的政策结构，大多数西方国家都有某种形式的筛选代理网络。他们最明显的支持是他们对创意项目的直接资助，随着复杂形式的联合制作和联合融资在制作过程中日益正常化，这一作用变得更加明显。在这里，该机构试图评估项目的风险，依靠其内部的专业知识，什么将'出售'。这样，该机构就代表政府和纳税人成为该行业的投资者。另一个作用是促进该国境外创造能力的质量。电影代理公司在吸引好莱坞电影或大预算电视剧等有利可图的大规模外来投资方面发挥着主导作用。为了做到这一点，放映机构是政府在财政激励计划等领域的主要游说者（例如，英国的“高端电视减税计划”或爱尔兰的“481条款”）。最后，放映机构通常有保护和促进一个国家的文化遗产，包括其语言的任务。电影院扮演着文化守门人的角色，确保为国家讲述“适当”的故事，无论其商业潜力如何。这可以通过其资助战略来实现，但也可以通过与该地区相关的技能开发或托管屏幕档案等活动来实现。Schlesinger et al 2015，奥克利et al 2014）以及这些机构产生和嵌入的文化政策（参见Hesmondhalgh et al 2015，Bondebjerg 2016）。然而，由于侧重于个别情况，就失去了辨别这些机构工作中的共同点和区别的机会。此外，它限制了对文化政策和规定的跨国方法的全面理解。虽然个别情况是重要的，许多关于文化生产的风险，全球电视和电影产业的竞争力，以及盎格鲁-撒克逊市场行使的权力的挑战是共同的许多国家在这项研究中。因此，我们特别借鉴布迪厄及其关于文化中介的著作作为理论基础，以重新激发文化生产过程中的权力问题。这是这个问题的权力，也集中了我们的注意力在小国家的背景下，他们面临着具体的结构性挑战，有关他们的可持续性，他们的屏幕产业，由于市场较小的票房，广告和许可费收入。在这方面，该机构承担着更重要的作用，引导当地的期望和一个竞争激烈但潜在价值很高的国际市场。

This study provides the first large-scale comparative study of screen agencies within seven small European nations. It assesses their impact on the outputs of our film and television industries and grows out of previous research of these nations and their creative sectors. It deepens and extends our critical understanding of the making of creative content and the ways in which cultural policy is shaped and enacted.The value of screen agencies as an object of study lies in their intervention in both economic and cultural goals for a country. Through their decision-making, allocation of resources and programmes of support, they potentially exercise significant power over their nation's cultural assets and outputs. Yet this power and the consequences of its application largely go unacknowledged by academics, unchallenged by screen professionals and invisible to audiences.The purpose of screen agencies is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public funding for screen-based industries, a sector well known for its distinct forms of public value but inherent riskiness. The agency model has become a legitimated and transferable policy structure with most Western nations having some form of screen agency network. Their most visible support is their direct funding of creative projects, a role that has become more pronounced as complex forms of co-production and co-financing become increasingly normalised within the production process. Here, the agency attempts to evaluate the riskiness of the project relying on its internal expertise about what will 'sell'. In this way the agency becomes an investor in the industry on behalf of the government and its taxpayers.A further role is to promote the quality of the country's creative capacity outside its borders. Screen agencies play a leading role in attracting lucrative forms of large-scale inward investment such as a Hollywood movie or big-budget television drama. To do this screen agencies are key lobbyist of government in areas such as fiscal incentive schemes (e.g. the UK's 'High End TV Tax Relief scheme' or 'Section 481' in Ireland).Finally, screen agencies often have a mandate to protect and promote the cultural heritage of a country including its language. The screen agency acts as a cultural gatekeeper ensuring 'appropriate' stories are told about and for the country, irrespective of their commercial potential. This can be delivered through its funding strategy, but also activities such as skills development or hosting screen archives relevant to that locale.Valuable research has been carried out on individual institutions (cf. Schlesinger et al 2015, Oakley et al 2014) and on the cultural policies from which these agencies emerge and are embedded (cf. Hesmondhalgh et al 2015, Bondebjerg 2016). However, in focusing on individual contexts the opportunity to discern commonalities and distinctions in the work of these agencies is lost. Furthermore, it limits a comprehensive understanding of cross-national approaches to cultural policy and provision. While individual context is important, many of the challenges regarding the riskiness of cultural production, the competitiveness of the global television and film industry, and the power exercised by Anglo-Saxon markets is common to many of the countries in this study. For this reason, we specifically draw on Bourdieu and his work on cultural intermediaries as the theoretical basis in order to reinvigorate questions of power within the process of cultural production. It is this question of power that also focuses our attention on the context of small nations who face specific structural challenges relating to their sustainability of their screen industries due to a smaller market for box office, advertising and license fee revenue. Here, the agency assumes an even more significant role navigating local expectations and a highly competitive, but potentially valuable, international market.