Infrastructures of the Perestroika Cinema-process: Distribution, Control and New Economic Conditions

Abstract

The article discusses the infrastructural foundations of the cinema process during Perestroika. This study fills the historiographical gap caused by the deficiency of research about economic practices at all stages of film production in the second half of the 1980s. The descriptive part analyses the supply chains of production / distribution / exchange of cinefilm and the practice of constructing facilities for film production. The first paragraph examines the relationship between organisations from the USSR Goskino system and cinefilm makers from the Ministry of Chemical Industries system. In addition, ways to acquire alternatives to national products are demonstrated: imported cinefilm and video tape. The second paragraph describes three areas of construction policy in which cinema organisations were involved: 1) objects for film exhibition (for example, cinemas); 2) buildings for studio work (for instance, film production plants); 3) buildings for industrial use (in particular, workshops for film copying, production and repair of equipment, etc.). The study is based on a historiographical tradition, according to which material objects are interpreted as the basis for the circulation of exchanges, the distribution of power and the legitimisation of ideas. Accordingly, the film-infrastructure is placed in the context of the struggle of actors. This allows us to formulate problems for rethinking the approach to the interpretation of the “political” during perestroika. Thus, the first conclusion highlights the tension between the declared need for the formation of autonomies and the actual practices of managing infrastructure flows. The second statement formulates the interpretation of the system of resources exchange. Relations between government departments were highly hierarchical, which made it difficult to find consensus in the context of increasing deficit. The emergence of new economic actors only complicated the situation. Their activity added to the problem of the coexistence of parallel systems for realising limits and formed the conditions for the transition from the right to use infrastructure to the right of ownership.