help id another french film

[mark shanon]

>The film was theatrically released...

As it is a video should we rather say "publicly shown"?

[Len801]

Until the early 1980's a lot of X-rated films were released in movie theaters in France (yes, there was a small porn video industry, mostly from Marc Video Dorcel and Lara). I am given to understand that in Italy porn films continued to be exhibited in movie theaters until about 1990. In the US, the video revolution (and other zoning laws) practically killed the theatrical exhibition of X-rated fare by the mid-1980's.
Is there a particular reason you prefer using the term "publicly shown", when we are talking about a film print (16 or 35m) shown in a movie theater?

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Author: mark shanon
Date: 11-13-05 21:57

>The film was theatrically released...

As it is a video should we rather say "publicly shown"?

[mark shanon]

>I am given to understand that in Italy porn films continued to be exhibited in movie theaters until about 1990.

I don't know who it was who gave you that information, but they still are, actually.

>Is there a particular reason you prefer using the term "publicly shown", when we are talking about a film print (16 or 35m) shown in a movie theater?

We are talking about a video production (la Madone de pipes is shot on video, not a 16 or 35 mm film: you haven't seen it but, probably, only read the review on La revue du cinema assuming wrongly that on that magazine only "films" were reviewed). This kind of production, which started in France at least as far back as 1979 (which means at least 3 years before video started timidly to be adopted in Usa (where production became full-fledged though not until about 1984-85) was not shown theatrically but in some kind of "club" which bludgeoned in the early '80's in France to circumvent the restrictive laws adopted by the government which made it difficult to earn a visa for a more or less regular theatrical release.

[mark shanon]

I spoke of "clubs" but, in most cases, the videoplayer and the tv set were generally located in a partition of a sexy-shop.

[Len801]

I had noticed the distributor was Audifilm, and so assumed it was shown in a film format. Thanks for the clarification, Mark.

[mark shanon]

>I had noticed the distributor was Audifilm, and so assumed it was shown in a film format.

I think that anyway in 1983 had yet to be invented the german system (can't remember the name) allowing video to be tolerably transferred on film without making the vision a mess. That was to come about 1987.