IOTL lots of countries have their own film industry, but the American is unquestionably the most influential. American films get a wider audience, are translated into more languages, and wield more cultural influence, than any other. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make some other country's film industry as influential as OTL's US -- or, if you prefer, give several countries industries of about equal importance. What would be the most likely PODs for this? And what would be the most likely countries? A Britain that's less damaged by the World Wars would be an obvious choice, or a China that successfully modernises and becomes a superpower by the early 20th century could be another option.
AHC: Alternative location(s) for the global film industry
- Thread starter Fabius Maximus
- Start date
I think France could be a good option if there was no world wars or at least the french territory was lest impacted by them. Movies started there and their film industry even if less commercial than the american's one has heald great influence with many great directors and movies. It is also a western country so he should not be really too difficult to make popular movies for a large international audience.
Interesting. Do you think this would be enough to keep French as the main international language?
Probably Russia/USSR considered a potential candidate with USSR quite easily filling the role the US has in Soviet/Socialist spheres they just need to de-escalate it media censorship a bit and reformed its economy that by 21st century it probably considered rivaled to US film industry . China probably has alot of potential for being a massive player decade ahead of time with maybe having a moderate/reformist Kuomintang government winning Chinese Civil war or moderate Communist government winning instead along with experience an economic miracle similar to OTL but decades ahead of time.
Not just France, a number of European countries had their movie industry cut down to size due to the world wars:
For example Austria-Hungary had a fairly well developing film industry, that even got a small boom in the first years after WW1. Otoh the war also led to a displacement for many involved. Most famous is perhaps Michael Curtiz who was driven from Hungary by Bela Kun.
German movie industry was in some ways a technological and artistic vanguard in the 20s, but perpetually short on capital. This forced e.g. UFA to look for US investors and allowed MGM and Paramount cheap and easy access to the German market with the lopsided Parufamet agreement. And then of course with the Nazis the artistic freedom and international outlook were sharply reduced.
I think without the world wars, especially WW2 the movie industry will remain more evenly split between various centers of gravity. In Europe probably at least a French and German one, maybe an AH one as well, though probably due to the shared language one interwined with the German one. The British movie industry will likely have a similar "problem" with the US movie industry. Hollywood will likely still be one, probably even the largest, but not as dominant. This will prevent the easy access to foreign markets of otl. Instead of forcing UFA to show their films for peanuts in UFA cinemas, the big studios instead will have to give the atl European market leaders reciprocal access to their own cinemas.
A more even playing field probably will lead to a more widespread use of dubbing and initially parallel multilingual shooting: especially the German film industry otl experimented a lot with both in the first years of talkies, with some success, but this remained largely confined to Europe, as the US market remained closed to most European studios due to the studio system and attitudes.
I remember that for one of the first major German talkies to make it to the US, one critic wrote basically "good perfomance, good sets, decent script, it would be a good movie if the actors weren't speaking with British accents." Acceptance of dubbing rises with the audience being used to it and the quality of the dubs - which increases with the size of the local dubbing industry. Thus a more splintered global movie industry, where this becomes standard from the beginning of the sound film, does only marginally help the standing of French (or German). Major markets will receive dubs, though minor ones might actually get a larger share of non-English subbed films.
Do you think animated movies could be more prominent, due to it being easier to dub them without it looking weird?
Probably not, at least for commercial and political use. I could see, however, more French words about cinema or French popularized by cinema being used worldwide. That would be kind of like what happened with Japanese, with many words about Japanese culture being used in foreign languages. The big difference would be that French in the OTL already had great influence on English and other languages, probably far more than Japanese.
I really thought of the same thread as yours, but involving alternate film (and media) capitals of both OTL and ATL countries.
I don't think so, good dubbing and an acclimatised audience works well enough with live-action (and on rare occasions even improves it, the German version of the Persuaders TV series being my favourite example).
That said the impact of a stronger European film industry on Animation could be interesting in itself. E.g. Lotte Reiniger in Germany had a more artistic approach to it (working mainly with shadow figures), Meanwhile the few parts of early Austrian animator Peter Eng's movies or animated ads surviving certainly have their own charm.
Definitely the UK is the likeliest, as they are the only country to rival the US on other fronts of popular culture, such as music or theatre. This is likely due to the English language and a long, uninterrupted history of cultural innovation and development. The only issue is to ensure sufficient capital but I guess without Hollywood that can be fixed by demand.
This one here definitely has the most potential compared to the others:
en.m.wikipedia.org
Babelsberg Studio - Wikipedia
This is probably the craziest idea so far in the thread, but what about Mexico? After all, New York was the original center of filmmaking, before Hollywood. The reason why Hollywood became the US filmmaking hub was its warm climate and to escape Thomas Edison's patent fees. But let's suppose that the Supreme Court rules in Edison's favor in United States v. Motion Picture Patents Co. , causing the early filmmakers to flee to Mexico. Interestingly, this ruling happened near the end of the Mexican Revolution and there was already an established film industry in Mexico.
That would be cool. To be even crazier, maybe you could have the world film industry get based in some tax haven microstate, like Luxembourg or the Cayman Islands.
Beatriz
Gone Fishin'
List of OTL countries by first film: a lot before 1900 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_first_films_by_country
The problem is that every national film industry is inherently given to navel-staring: filming their own culture in their own language. So most national film industries will be limited in their viewership to their own culture/language base and need a culture/language base big enough to flourish. Also they need a world presence to project its culture outside of its geographical boundaries.
In this world, the US has a huge home field advantage with it being the most influential world player and English being the most widely understood language. Japan has a small home market but is a huge export power economically and culturally, which explains the worldwide spread of anime. China by comparison has a huge domestic market, but no real cultural impact beyond that. That's why it's movie industry worldwide is lagging behind that of Taiwan.
So the main challenge of a 'national' global film industry is to have a national culture that is known, studied and emulated worldwide. I would like to see a global Spanish-language cinema in either Mexico (City) or Buenos Aires. They have the home market, but lack the international presence. So we need a timeline where Meso/South American culture is much more dominant. Likewise, it would be easy to imagine a global film industry centered around Paris or Berlin in a timeline where French was still the world's diplomatic language or German still the language of science and research.
In this world, the US has a huge home field advantage with it being the most influential world player and English being the most widely understood language. Japan has a small home market but is a huge export power economically and culturally, which explains the worldwide spread of anime. China by comparison has a huge domestic market, but no real cultural impact beyond that. That's why it's movie industry worldwide is lagging behind that of Taiwan.
So the main challenge of a 'national' global film industry is to have a national culture that is known, studied and emulated worldwide. I would like to see a global Spanish-language cinema in either Mexico (City) or Buenos Aires. They have the home market, but lack the international presence. So we need a timeline where Meso/South American culture is much more dominant. Likewise, it would be easy to imagine a global film industry centered around Paris or Berlin in a timeline where French was still the world's diplomatic language or German still the language of science and research.
Only for anime and very limited even, but again japanese film industry doesn't give a damn export markets anyway