The “Cultural” of Production and Career

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the central cultural tenets of career and filmmaking among the Danish film industry elite or what is inelegantly and somewhat grammatically incorrectly referred to as “the ‘cultural’ of production and career” in this chapter’s title. The theory behind this formulation is that it focuses attention on the ideational dimensions of culture in the Danish film industry, especially as derived from reflections on work and career by those working in that industry. In this sense, the approach, though less inclusive and ambitious, resembles Caldwell’s interest in “‘indigenous’ interpretive frameworks” in Production Culture.’ This chapter also argues that production and career decisions and actions are inextricably linked. Sometimes the two are consciously and obviously linked in terms of the implications that working on a given film with given people in a given manner, etc., will have on one’s further work opportunities. Or, the converse, career considerations can affect how films are made in terms of who works on them and what resources, skills, tastes, and perspectives are brought into and used in a production. Sometimes the interrelation of these considerations remains latent. This chapter explores how certain cultural issues underpinning inter-occupational collaboration, especially deference, occupational respect and integrity, and occupational revitalization in particular, support forms of these mutually intertwined considerations. This chapter also focuses on how the content of several of these cultural considerations supports a particular form of auteur ideology and practice in the Danish film industry and shows how this ideology is made up of discrete cultural components that secure expressive space for A-function holders rather than a hierarchically imposed command-and-control coordinating regime.