[Commlist] New book on Film Studios in Britain, France, Germany and Italy

Just published in by BFI/Bloomsbury in Open Access: /Film Studios in 
Britain, France, Germany and Italy: Architecture, Innovation, Labour, 
Politics, 1930-60/. The book is co-authored by Sarah Street, Tim 
Bergfelder, Richard Farmer, Eleanor Halsall, Sue Harris, Carla Mereu 
Keating and Catherine O’Rawe:

https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781839025372

Date of Publication:
2026
Published Online:
17 December 2025
Collection(s):
Bloomsbury Open Access, Title by Title
Place of Publication:
London
Printer/Publisher:
British Film Institute

Summary
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.
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