Critical Reflections on Cinema Belgica: The Database for New Cinema History in Belgium

Critical Reflections on Cinema Belgica: The Database for New Cinema History in Belgium VINCENT DUCATTEEUW SALLY CHAMBERS DANIEL BILTEREYST PIETERJAN DE POTTER PHILIPPE MEERS TAMAR CACHET CHRISTOPHE VERBRUGGEN NICOLAS FRANCK DRIES MOREELS FLORIAN DEROO RESEARCH PAPER JULIA NOORDEGRAAF *Author affiliations can be found in the back matter of this article ABSTRACT New Cinema History broadened film studies by emphasising the complexity of cinema as a multifaceted phenomenon that includes the socio-economic context in which films were made, circulated, shown and received. As part of the digital turn, the discipline adopted computational methods and created quantitative research data to research this socio-economic context at scale. However, not all datasets created in this context adhere to FAIR principles, decreasing their reusability. By reconciling 14 cinema-related datasets, Cinema Belgica facilitates research into the history of Belgian cinema. This research paper documents and critically reflects on the choices made when selecting, modelling and reconciling information for the Cinema Belgica database. CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Vincent Ducatteeuw Department of History, Ghent University, Ghent, BE; Antwerp Cultural Heritage Sciences (ARCHES), University of Antwerp, Antwerp, BE; Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities (GhentCDH), Ghent University, Ghent, BE KEYWORDS: Cinema Belgica; new cinema history; digital humanities; linked open data; databases; cinema heritage TO CITE THIS ARTICLE: Ducatteeuw, V., Biltereyst, D., Meers, P., Verbruggen, C., Moreels, D., Noordegraaf, J., Chambers, S., De Potter, P., Cachet, T., Franck, N., & Deroo, F. (2023). Critical Reflections on Cinema Belgica: The Database for New Cinema History in Belgium. Journal of Open Humanities Data, 9: 1, pp. 1–16. DOI: https://doi. org/10.5334/johd.91 (1) INTRODUCTION Cinema Belgica (CB)1 is an online database that integrates 14 existing datasets covering Belgian film production, distribution, exhibition, censorship and reception. In order to facilitate (inter)national data exchange and comparative research into cinema history, the platform (a) integrates key datasets related to Belgian cinema history, (b) makes them accessible according to FAIR principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016), and (c) enriches them with heritage collections. CB is Belgium’s contribution to the growing network of historical cinema databases, such as Cinema Context2 and The German Early Cinema Database3 (Dibbets, 2010; Garncarz, 2014). To explain the historiographical value of the contributed datasets and the selection criteria underlying them, the first section of this article discusses the field of New Cinema History (NCH). Section two provides the relevant metadata about the database discussed in this paper. The creation of the database is thoroughly discussed in the third section, with an emphasis on corpus building, data modelling and reconciliation methods. The scalability of CB’s approach and the re-use potential of the aggregated data is discussed in the final part of this article. (1.1) NEW CINEMA HISTORY AND THE RENEWAL OF FILM HISTORIOGRAPHY In their groundbreaking historiographical reflection on film history, Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery (1993, p. 68) argued that the approach to cinema has long been focused on the aesthetical, ideological and representational qualities of films, whereas “economic, technological, and cultural aspects of film history are subordinate to the establishment of a canon of enduring cinematic classics.” Since then, film scholars have made a concerted effort to resolve this issue, mainly by paying closer attention to the socio-cultural and economic contexts in which films are produced, circulated, exhibited and received. Identifying themselves as “New Cinema Historians”, a new generation of film scholars aims to comprehend the complexity of cinema as a wider phenomenon that is influenced by various spheres of life: “[cinema] involves a specific place (the cinema as exhibition and a physical venue); a space (an imaginary and socially embedded version of this site); an industry (of production, distribution, exhibition and circulation); an experience (cinemagoing as a sensory and imaginative practice); and even a way of life (in which people act, talk, play or think ‘cinematically’ – comme du cinéma – in everyday life)” (Biltereyst, Maltby & Meers, 2019, p. 2). Although not entirely new (Cressey, 1938; Elsaesser, 1986; Mayer, 1948), these arguments for viewing and analysing cinema as a broad socio-cultural and economic phenomenon began to emerge more clearly on the research agenda of film/cinema historians at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s (Kuhn, 1999, 2002; Maltby et al., 2007; Maltby & Stokes, 2004; Stacey, 1994; Stokes & Maltby, 1999a, 1999b, 2001). New cinema historians ushered in a shift from film to cinema history, addressing topics such as an audience’s cinemagoing memories, engagement with films, and relationship to film venues, not just as places where films are shown, but also as social spaces embedded within local communities and neighbourhoods’ memories (Kuhn, Biltereyst & Meers, 2017). In addition to this audience-centred shift in film historiography, NCH was also greatly influenced by the spatial turn, which placed a strong emphasis on issues related to the location of movie theatres, the spatial characteristics of their interiors and ambiance, and the significance of space and place in interpreting moviegoing experiences and memories. This trend of researching historical film audiences (Egan, Smith & Terrill, 2022) invites the use of a wide range of data, methods, and theoretical foundations. In an effort to understand the historical audience, researchers perform quantitative analyses of box-office revenues (Sedgwick, 2011); they use corporate reports or other recordings and testimonies on the audience coming from the industry (Sullivan, 2010); they turn to film programme analyses in order to understand what cinemagoers viewed in which venues at what kinds of locations (Biltereyst et al., 2011); they examine letters and other traces left by historical film fans; fan literature and movie magazines are now examined in different directions, also by using digitised film magazines or newspapers (Biltereyst & Van de Vijver, 2020); and they use questionnaires or interview older cinemagoers (Taylor, 1989). In recent years, NCH has developed into a 1 https://www.cinemabelgica.be (last accessed: 11 October 2022). 2 https://www.cinemacontext.nl/ (last accessed: 4 November 2022). 3 https://earlycinema.dch.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/ (last accessed: 4 November 2022). Ducatteeuw et al. Journal of Open Humanities Data DOI: 10.5334/johd.91 2 more mature, inter- and multidisciplinary field. It now makes use of perspectives that were previously frequently ignored within the field of film studies, such as ethnographic research (Richards, 2003; Taylor, 1989), memory (...truncated)