Film Studios in Britain, France, Germany and Italy

Architecture, Innovation, Labour, Politics, 1930-60

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by Sarah Street, Tim Bergfelder, Richard Farmer and Eleanor Halsall

Type: Studies
Subject: Countries > Europe
Keywords: Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Studio, 1930s, 1650s
Publishing date: 2026 (February 05, 2026) (Upcoming)
Publisher: BFI Publishing
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 576 pages
6 ½ x 9 ½ inches (16.5 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-1-83902-534-1

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Book Presentation:
This open access book investigates film studios in Britain, France, Germany and Italy between the 1930s and 1960s. During this time, studios faces unprecedented challenges including wartime disruptions, post-war fragmentation, movement of labour and the introduction of new technologies.

While the study of film studios has been dominated by the centralized Hollywood 'studio system', the authors present new research about the often very different histories of Europe's film studios, comparing their geographic locations, architectures and infrastructural development. They explore a number of well-known studios including Pinewood, Joinville, Babelsberg and Cinecittà, as well as lesser-known production sites such as Manchester, Victorine, post-war West German studios and Tirrenia as diverse creative and economic infrastructures.

Drawing on a wealth of archival sources, photographs, films, aerial maps and visualizations, the book charts how artistic practices responded to transnational flows in film studio expertise, as studios constituted formative, materially based 'spaces of the imagination' that produced some of cinema's most influential films. How studios worked in the past as dynamic, creative working environments that were profoundly influenced by their locations, architectures and personnel, is foregrounded as the authors produce new understandings of how the collaborative and material environments of studio spaces and technologies shaped film production and cultures.

The open access edition of this book is available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.

About the authors:
Sarah Street is Professor of Film at the University of Bristol, UK.Tim Bergfelder is Professor of Film at the University of Southampton, UK. His many books include Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema (2007), Concise Cinegraph: the Encyclopedia of German Cinema (2006), Stars and Stardom in Brazilian Cinema (2018), and The German Cinema Book 2nd Edition (2020). Richard Farmer is Research Associate in the Department of Film and Television at the University of Bristol, UK. His publications include The Food Companions: Cinema and Consumption in Wartime Britain, 1939-45 (2011) and Cinema and Cinema-going in Wartime Britain, 1939-45: The Utility Dream Palace (2016). He co-authored Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema (2019) and has published many articles on aspects of British film and culture.Eleanor Halsall is Research Associate on STUDIOTEC. Her publications include 'Franz Osten and the history of Indo-German relations' in The German Cinema Book (ed. Bergfelder et al., 2020), 'Kosmopoliten, Nationalisen, Visonäre in Filmblatt (1921/22), and 'Josef Wirsching and The Kreuzer Emden' in Beyond the Silver Screen: Josef Wirsching and an unseen history of Indian cinema (ed. Mukherjee, 2021).Sue Harris is Professor Emerita of Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London, UK. She is the author of Bertrand Blier (2001), An American in Paris (2015), co-author of Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema (2007) and co-editor of France in Focus: Film and National Identity (2000) and From Perversion to Purity: The Stardom of Catherine Deneuve (2007). She is a Fellow of the Camargo Foundation, and a Trustee of the UK French Film Festival.

Press Reviews:
"This innovative and multi-prismatic volume offers an ambitious reordering of how we might understand European film history during the classical era. Instead of merely seeing the film studio as a series of static compartments facilitating the stable rectangle of the screen image, the authors animate a dynamic and transnational site of collaboration, social experience and political possibility. Just as the contours of the fictional film frame mobilise the conjunction of time and space for narrative ends, so this book too understands the scaled temporal-spatial potential of the film studio as a site of ongoing cultural meaning. Blending archival documentation, poly-vocal argumentation and conceptual acumen, this impressively researched work is going to reset the study of European cinema for a generation." ―Alastair Phillips, Professor of Film Studies, University of Warwick, UK

"Written by a group of experts in British, French, German and Italian cinema this truly groundbreaking book marks a milestone for the historical study of studio filmmaking in Western Europe during one of its most turbulent but also most prolific periods. An admirable achievement." ―Michael Wedel, Professor of Media History, Filmuniversität Babelsberg, Germany

See the publisher website: BFI Publishing

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