Integrating Local Practices into Global Art Film Distribution: Organizational Limits of a Chinese Art NGO

Zhemin Huang, University of Notre Dame

Due to political oversight of film distribution, art films in China have circulated mainly through an informal distribution system composed of universities, cine-clubs, bars, and small festivals. Although this system has enabled the transnational flow of art films, it has relied heavily on piracy and has therefore remained disconnected from the distribution systems operating in other countries that are grounded in global copyright law. This research examines a Chinese art NGO, PVC, that attempted to connect local distribution practices to the global distribution system. Based on 11 months of fieldwork, this research finds that this NGO-based organizational effort was constrained by the intersection of global and local institutions. Because local distribution networks were underdeveloped, the transaction costs of acquiring a diverse range of films from existing global distribution networks were high. In the absence of a mature division of labor in the local distribution system, PVC had to undertake many distinct forms of work simultaneously in order to circulate art films effectively; it also had to reach audiences and cultivate their tastes. To do so, PVC organized screening events itself while also collaborating with other distribution channels. However, the transaction costs of such collaborations were also high, largely because few established conventions existed to guide these negotiations. As a result, PVC required substantial resources—not only financial resources, but also a professional workforce and a high degree of rationalized organization. Yet under the local political-economic order, the resources available to PVC were too limited to sustain such an organizational arrangement. Combining political-economy and organizational perspectives, this study illuminates how a specific organizational form of cultural distribution operates at the intersection of political and economic orders sustained by global and local regimes, respectively. It also reveals the clash and irreconcilable conflict between global and local powers, both of which are highly rationalized.

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 Presented in Session 136. Fields, Organizations, and Differentiation