Cinema's Atmospheric A Priori
How Weather and Environment Shaped Celluloid Film Manufacturing and Raw Material Supply at Fujifilm, Daicel, and Agfa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22416492 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marek Jancovic (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 21-42 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-03 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Iluminace (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0862-397X • E-ISSN: 2570-9267 |
| Publisher | Národní filmový archiv (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.58193/ilu.1819 |
| OpenAlex | W7127122888 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 30 |
Where was the cotton for Fujifilm’s cine-film grown? Who supplied the animal parts that would end up coated on Agfa’s film as gelatin? How did climate, environment, geology, and river hydrology shape the history of celluloid film manufacturing, and thus of cinema? This article enlists several archival collections and a range of little-known, multi-language secondary sources in the broader task of understanding cinema’s relationship with the material environment and climate, and its historical role in global trade, extractivist practices, and colonial politics. Drawing on primary source research in the archives of film stock and chemical manufacturers Agfa-Gevaert, IG Farben, and Schering, and on the corporate histories of Fujifilm and Dainippon Celluloid, I clarify how parts of the raw material supply chain for celluloid film were structured between roughly 1920 and 1945. Methodologically, this article integrates eco-media thought with spatial approaches to show how nonhuman elements (earth, wood, air, and water) are historically implicated in the global photochemical industry. It introduces the notion of the atmospheric a priori and shifts emphasis to East Asian sites — or rather: environments — often overlooked in English-language research. By attending both to fine-grained microhistories of individual factories as well as global transnational trade networks, the article challenges prevailing Euro- and Americentric narratives of film technology and provides a situated account of the critical role of logistics and environment in cinema’s material foundation.
Colonialism · Narrative · Raw material · Situated · Supply chain · Cinema and Media Studies · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Japanese History and Culture
The Camphor Tree and the Elephant
A Geology of Media
Moving Films
Mapping Flat, Deep, and Slow
Den Markt klar im Sucher !?“ Krise und Niedergang des Amateurkamerageschäfts der Agfa-Gevaert AG in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren
The Camphor Question Is in Reality the Savage Question”
Competition and the Politics of War
Space, Place, and Case
Commodity frontiers and global histories
Entangled Media Histories
Celluloid geopolitics
Towards a natural history of film form
Allegories of the past
When Postcolonial Studies Interrupts Media Studies
Introduction
| Highly cited | No |
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