Developing Global Culture: The Emergence of E.U. Aid to Audiovisual Industries Abroad

• In Event: Global/Regional Media Flows and Citizen Health and Identity

Abstract

Since the 1970s, international organizations – particularly UNESCO and the EU – have increasingly directed funding and resources to audiovisual industries in the Global South. Programs such as UNESCO’s Fund for the Promotion of Culture or the EU’s ACP-Films and Euromed Audiovisual fund technical training for audiovisual professionals, global and regional film distribution, and occasionally the production of films and TV shows. In this paper, I trace the emergence of EU audiovisual aid programs, situating them within postwar practices and discourses of international development, media globalization, and international institutions. While small in scale compared to other development aid programs, I argue that these transnational interventions in cultural production are nevertheless representative of larger post WWII trends in the institutionalization of culture as a panacea for the symptoms of globalization.

Author

• Benjamin Andrew James Pearson, U of Michigan