ABSTRACT
There is a long-standing theoretical and policy preoccupation with notions such as “industrial districts” and “clusters” when describing the governance and spatiality of networks in the film and television industries.1 In this chapter, we assert that such analyses run the danger of over-privileging the importance of local institutional and organizational network relations, and thereby downplay the significance of a range of extra-local networks upon which the nature, or indeed the very existence, of these formations may depend. Instead, we argue for a conceptualization that recognizes how the majority of so-called film industry clusters or industrial districts are embedded in, and shaped by, a complex web of multi-scalar network connections. Effective analysis and ensuing policy prescriptions must recognize the key extra-local network relations – be they intra-regional, intra-national or international – upon which agglomerations are predicated. In short, we need to develop a non-deterministic “critical political economy” of these networks that considers exactly where the power to initiate, foster and develop local network formations resides, how it is enacted, and what its implications are. This in turn necessitates a broad focus that looks beyond the actual film production process to reveal the key domains of finance, distribution and exhibition that exert a massive influence on the organizational structures and geography of the industry.
