The Decline of the Hollywood Empire

David E. Kemp is professor emeritus of drama at Queen’s University.

Philosopher and multimedia artist Hervé Fischer has taught the
sociology of culture and communication at the Sorbonne for many years.
While working at Concordia University in Montreal, he established a
centre of excellence in multimedia research.

Fischer is not enamoured of the entertainment empire we call Hollywood.
He believes that it has been built up over the course of a century
through dubious business practices such as dumping and buying up the
competition and transforming cinema into a cash cow with no reference to
quality. Exclusionary practices related to finance and distribution have
kept smaller players out of the mainstream world of entertainment and,
inevitably, have stifled the industry’s creative potential.

Recently, however, even though the major studios have invested huge
sums of money in both productions and promotion, the vapid studio-made
epics have lost audience support an ever-accelerating rate. Fischer
believes that there will be a move from 35-mm to digital film
distribution that will allow currently marginalized independent and
amateur filmmakers to gain unprecedented positions of power and
importance. His crusading work is essential reading for anyone who cares
about the future of cinema.