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Airline deregulation

Airline deregulation is the process of removing government-imposed entry and price restrictions on airlines affecting, in particular, the carriers permitted to serve specific routes. In the United States, the term usually applies to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. A new form of regulation has been developed to some extent to deal with problems such as the allocation of the limited number of slots available at airports.

Introduction
As jets were integrated into the market in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the industry experienced dramatic growth. By the mid-1960s, airlines were carrying roughly 100 million passengers and by the mid-1970s, over 200 million Americans had traveled by air. This steady increase in air travel began placing serious strains on the ability of federal regulators to cope with the increasingly complex nature of air travel.The onset of high inflation, low economic growth, falling productivity, rising labor costs and higher fuel costs proved problematic to the airlines.

Although it is generally recognized that the purpose behind government regulation is to create a stable industry, in the decades leading up to deregulation many airline market analysts expressed concerns with the structure of the United States' passenger air transport system. Concerns included high barriers to entry for fledgling airlines, slow government response to existing airlines entering to compete in city-pairings, and monopolistic practices by legacy airlines artificially inflating passenger ticket prices.

In order to address these growing concerns airline deregulation began in the US in 1978. It was, and still is, a part of a sweeping experiment to ultimately reduce ticket prices and entry controls holding sway over new airline hopefuls. Airline deregulation had begun with initiatives by economist Alfred E. Kahn in the Nixon administration, carried through the Ford administration and finally, at the behest of Ted Kennedy, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 as the Airline Deregulation Act.

Globally, state supported airlines are still relatively common, maintaining control over ticket prices and route entry, but many countries have since deregulated their own domestic airline markets. A similar but less laissez-faire approach has been taken by the European Union, Australia, United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Ireland and select South and Central American nations.

In the United States
In the early days of interstate air travel, the prevalent thought at the time was that government regulation was necessary to protect and promote the fledgling industry. For example, the then dominant rail industry was forbidden from a financial interest in airlines to prevent them from smothering competition in the industry. Congress created the Civil Aeronautics Authority, which became the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), and gave the CAB the power to regulate airline routes, control entry to and exit from the market, and mandate service rates, to investigate accidents, certify aircraft and pilots, to create rules for air traffic control (ATC) and to recommend new rules to prevent repetition of previous accidents. Additional airline safety regulation came later with the passage of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, which created the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as a separate regulatory body.

Civil Aeronautics Board
In 1938 the U.S. government, through the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), regulated many areas of commercial aviation such as routes, fares and schedules. The CAB had three main functions: to award routes to airlines, to limit the entry of air carriers into new markets, and to regulate fares for passengers.

Much of the established practices of commercial passenger travel within the US, went back even farther, to the policies of Walter Folger Brown, the US postmaster general from 1929 to 1933 in the administration of President Herbert Hoover. After passage of the Air Mail Act of 1930, also known as the McNary-Watres act, Brown had changed the mail payments system to encourage the manufacture of passenger aircraft instead of mail carrying aircraft. His influence was crucial in awarding contracts so as to create four major domestic airlines: United, American, Eastern, and Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA). Contracts for each of three transcontinental air mail routes were awarded to United Aircraft and Transport Corporation (later United), Robertson Aircraft Corporation (later American), and Transcontinental Air Transport (later TWA). The contract for the New York to Washington route was awarded to Eastern Air Transport, which would later become Eastern Air Lines. By 1933, United, American, TWA, and Eastern accounted for about 94% of air mail revenue. Similarly, Brown had also helped give Pan American a monopoly on international routes. (See also the US Centennial of Flight Commission )

Typical regulatory thinking from the 1940s onward is evident in a Civil Aeronautics Board report. In the absence of particular circumstances presenting an affirmative reason for a new carrier, there appears to be no inherent desirability of increasing the present number of carriers merely for the purpose of numerically enlarging the industry.

Airline Deregulation Act
The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 removed many of the previously mentioned controls. Prior to deregulation, it was required that airlines first seek regulatory approval to serve any given route. Thus incumbent airline operators could raise barriers to the challenge of new competition. This system was dismantled as a result of the Airline Deregulation Act. (See also the Centennial of Flight Commission ) It also dismantled the notion of a flag carrier.

Post-deregulation
In the wake of deregulation, airlines have adopted new strategies and consumers are experiencing a new market. Below are the marquee effects of deregulation.

Hub and spoke
In the immediate aftermath of deregulation, many large airlines adopted a hub-and-spoke system. In this system, several smaller routes ("spokes") are connected to a single larger route ("hubs") are selected an airport, the hub, as the point for flights from a number of origination cities, the spokes. Because hubs allowed passenger travel to be consolidated in "transfer stations", capacity utilization increased, decreasing costs and lowering ticket prices.

Low-cost carriers
While deregulation led legacy airlines to switch to a hub-and-spoke model, the old point-to-point transit model was quickly adopted by the new generation of low-cost carriers (LCCs) that emerged in the 1970s and 80s. While previously, LCCs such as Southwest Airlines were only permitted to serve routes that did not cross state borders (placing them outside the purview of the CAB), deregulation allowed low-cost airlines to choose their own domestic routes, fares, and schedules, increasing competition across state lines and creating new markets outside the two largest states (California and Texas). As the cost of flying dropped, the number of potential customers increased, making many smaller routes viable.

Price
Base ticket prices have declined steadily since deregulation. The inflation-adjusted 1982 constant dollar yield for airlines has fallen from 12.3 cents in 1978 to 7.9 cents in 1997, and the inflation-adjusted real price of flying fell 44.9% from 1978 to 2011. Along with a rising US population and the increasing demand of workforce mobility, these trends were some of the catalysts for dramatic expansion in passenger miles flown, increasing from 250 million passenger miles in 1978 to 750 million passenger miles in 2005.

Service quality
Over the past several years the public's view of airline service quality has shown a significant drop. According to the 2008 American Customer Satisfaction Index, a University of Michigan study of 80,000 consumers' expectations and preferences, the major US airlines ranked last among all the industries surveyed. In 2009, the airlines have moved up to being one point ahead of Cable & Satellite TV and the newspaper industry (though results for all industries were not available at the time of this writing).

In 2011 Congress finally responded to repeated calls for the United States government to pass an "Air Passenger Bill of Rights" to provide specific requirements about what must happen to air passengers in certain conditions. The push for the bill stemmed from several high-profile passenger strandings over the last several years. On April 25, 2011, the Enhancing Airline Passenger Protections rule, 76 Fed. Reg. 32,110, was enacted. Among other items, the rule includes raising the minimum "denied boarding compensation" to customers with valid tickets yet still not allowed to board the aircraft. The legislation further penalizes airlines up to $27,500 a passenger if left stranded aboard an aircraft, on a tarmac for more than three hours. In 2010, the largest trade associations representing airline management interests before Capitol Hill, Airlines for America and the Regional Airline Association, opposed this legislation stating that they could self-regulate themselves and they already had begun implementing systems by which to mitigate any tarmac delays. Later American Eagle, an RAA airline member, was the first airline to be fined under the new legislation. A total settlement including fines and compensation paid to passengers totaled $800,000 for tarmac delays incurred in Chicago in May 2011.

Deregulation advocate Alfred Kahn noted a deterioration in the quality of airline service following deregulation, including the "turmoil" of massive restructuring of airline routes, price wars, conflicts with airline employee unions, airline bankruptcies, and industry consolidation. He also noted unexpected congestion and delays "that have plagued air travelers in recent years". However, he also argued that such congestion and delays was also a sign of deregulation success (because they were caused by lower prices leading Americans to book more flights). Kahn considered the turmoil, congestion, and delays to be unforeseen "surprises" from deregulation, but believed they continued to support deregulation in spite of these events.

Competition among carriers
A major goal of airline deregulation was to increase competition between airline carriers, leading to price decreases. As a result of deregulation, barriers to entry into the airlines industry for a potential new airline decreased significantly, resulting in many new airlines entering the market, thus increasing competition.

Effects on airline staff
A key indicator of the volatility of deregulation from 1976 to 1986 in the US revolves around employee affairs. Airlines saw a 39% increase in employees (according to Alfred Kahn), and saw continued yet less rapid growth throughout the 1990s. Subsequently, between 2000 and 2008, 100,000 jobs were shed - approximately 20% - and formerly busy hub airports (such as Pittsburgh and St. Louis) reduced staffing due to a significantly decreased number of flights.

Immediately following the September 11th attacks, the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act provided the US airlines with $15 billion in loans and an additional $5 billion in grants by the US government. Despite these loans and grants, nearly every major carrier fired 20% of its staff, with United and American both cutting 20,000 jobs. It is difficult to determine the precise job losses due to the effects of deregulation, given such layoffs. Then-retired former CEO of American Airlines Robert Crandall stated, "I'm not sure 9/11 by itself had any particular profound impact [on the industry], but it exacerbated the problems they had before 9/11."

Although regular pay-cuts had become commonplace in the years following deregulation, of the employees remaining after September 11, 2001, the average pay cut has been 18%, with many of the highest earners seeing as much as 40% reductions. Further, virtually every regularly scheduled airline has shifted its pension obligations to its employees.

According to a study by economist David Card, deregulation resulted in the shift of approximately 5,000 to 7,000 airline mechanic jobs from the major trunk airlines to smaller carriers between 1978 and 1984. Because such smaller carriers typically pay less than the major airlines, the average hourly wage of airline mechanics decreased by up to 5 percent; however, this decrease is said to be relatively small.

Open Skies
Beyond the domestic liberalization of the airlines in the US, Open Skies agreements are bilateral agreements between the US and other countries to open the aviation market to foreign access and remove barriers to competition. These agreements give airlines the right to operate air services from any point in the US to any point in the other country, as well as to and from third countries. The first major Open Skies agreements were entered into in 1979.

The US has Open Skies agreements with more than 60 countries, including 15 of the 28 EU nations. Open Skies agreements have been successful at removing many of the government-implemented barriers to competition and allowing airlines to have foreign partners, access to international routes to and from their home countries, and freedom from many traditional forms of economic regulation.

Criticisms
With long standing companies like Braniff, TWA, and Pan Am disappearing through bankruptcy since 1978, the years since 2000 have seen every remaining legacy carrier file for bankruptcy at least once. US Airways filed twice in the same number of years. During the same time period, Southwest Airlines continued to expand its route structure, buy new airplanes, and hire more employees, while remaining profitable. JetBlue, a new airline that started up in 1999, "was one of only a few U.S. airlines that made a profit during the sharp downturn in airline travel following the September 11, 2001 attacks. For many years, analysts had predicted that JetBlue's growth rate would become unsustainable. Despite this, the airline continued to add planes and routes to the fleet at a brisk pace. JetBlue is one of the largest airlines in the Northeast United States."

Various proposals have been made by labor unions, former management and industry analysts, including federal price controls and mandated routes served by major airlines with the intent of increasing both prices and competition.

In June 2008 former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall stated,

"The consequences of deregulation have been very adverse. Our airlines, once world leaders, are now laggards in every category, including fleet age, service quality and international reputation. Fewer and fewer flights are on time. Airport congestion has become a staple of late-night comedy shows. An even higher percentage of bags are lost or misplaced. Last-minute seats are harder and harder to find. Passenger complaints have skyrocketed. Airline service, by any standard, has become unacceptable."Crandall has also criticized deregulation for causing airlines to cut service to smaller airports, resulting in a "relatively unsatisfactory transportation network;" he argues that this "has accelerated the movement of people towards the big cities and has discouraged the creation of medium-sized cities."

References and further reading

 * Avent-Holt, Dustin. (2012) "The political dynamics of market organization: Cultural framing, neoliberalism, and the case of airline deregulation." Sociological Theory 30.4 (2012): 283–302.
 * Brown, John Howard. (2014) "Jimmy Carter, Alfred Kahn, and airline deregulation: Anatomy of a policy success." Independent Review 19.1 (2014): 85-99 online.
 * Button, Kenneth, ed. (2017) Airline deregulation: international experiences (Routledge, 2017).
 * Button, Kenneth. (2015) "A Book, the Application, and the Outcomes: How Right Was Alfred Kahn in the Economics of Regulation about the Effects of the Deregulation of the US Domestic Airline Market?." History of Political Economy 47.1 (2015): 1-39.
 * Goetz, Andrew R., and Timothy M. Vowles. (2009) "The good, the bad, and the ugly: 30 years of US airline deregulation." Journal of Transport Geography 17.4 (2009): 251–263. online
 * Goetz, A. R., Sutton, J. C., (1997), "The Geography of Deregulation in the U.S. Airline Industry," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87#2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 238–262,
 * Kahn, A. E. (1988), "Surprises of Airline Deregulation", American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 78, no. 2: 316–22.
 * McDonnell, Gary. (2015) "What Caused Airline Deregulation: Economists or Economics?." Independent Review 19.3 (2015): 379-395 online.
 * Morrison, Steven, and Clifford Winston. (2010) The economic effects of airline deregulation (Brookings Institution Press, 2010).
 * Poole, R. W. Jr., Butler V., (1999), "Airline Deregulation: The Unfinished Revolution," Regulation, vol. 22, no. 1, Spring 1999, pp. 8.,
 * Rose, Nancy L. (2012) "After airline deregulation and Alfred E. Kahn." American Economic Review 102.3 (2012): 376-80 online.
 * Sinha, Dipendra. (2018) Deregulation and liberalisation of the airline industry: Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania (Routledge, 2019).
 * Thierer, A. D. (1998), 20th Anniversary of Airline Deregulation: Cause for Celebration, Not Re-Regulation, (The Heritage Foundation)
 * Williams, George. (2017) The airline industry and the impact of deregulation (Routledge, 2017).

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title: Airline deregulation


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Georgios Papadopoulos

Georgios Papadopoulos ( Γεώργιος Παπαδόπουλος ; 5 May 1919 – 27 June 1999) was a Greek military officer and dictator who led a coup d'etat in Greece in 1967 and became the country's Prime Minister from 1967 to 1973. He also was the President of Greece under the junta in 1973, following a referendum. However, after the effective suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising, he was, in turn, overthrown by hardliner Dimitrios Ioannidis, in a string of events that would culminate to the fall of the regime in 1974. His and the dictatorship's legacy, as well as its methods he constructed and effects on Greek economy and society as a whole, are still fiercely debated.

He joined the Hellenic Army during the Second World War and resisted the Greco-Italian War; in so doing he obtained honors and became a hero. He remained in the army after the war and rose to the rank of colonel.

In April 1967, Papadopoulos and a group of other mid-level army officers overthrew the democratic government and established a military junta that lasted until 1974. Assuming dictatorial powers, he led an authoritarian, anti-communist and ultranationalist regime which eventually ended the Greek monarchy and established a republic, with himself as president. In 1973, he was overthrown and arrested by his co-conspirator Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis. After the Metapolitefsi which restored democracy in 1974, Papadopoulos was tried for his part in the crimes of the junta and sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Refusing several offers of clemency in exchange for admitting guilt for the crimes of the junta, he spent the remainder of his life in prison.

Early life and military career
Papadopoulos was born in Elaiohori, a small village in the Prefecture of Achaea in the Peloponnese, to local schoolteacher Christos Papadopoulos and his wife Chrysoula. He was the eldest son and had two brothers, Konstantinos and Haralambos. After finishing high school in 1937, he enrolled in the Hellenic Military Academy, completing its three-year programme in 1940.

His biographical notes, published as a booklet by his supporters in 1980, mention that he took a civil engineering course at the Polytechneion but did not graduate.

Resistance and acquiescence
During the Second World War, Papadopoulos saw field action as an artillery second lieutenant against both Italian and Nazi German forces which attacked Greece on 6 April 1941.

It has been argued by various authors that Papadopoulos was a member of the Security Battalions under the command of Colonel Kourkoulakos, who was responsible for the formation of the "Security Battalions" in Patras which "hunted down" Greek resistance fighters. However, Evanthis Hatzivassiliou and Leonidas F. Kallivretakis disagree with this claim. It has also been argued that Papadopoulos, at the end of the Axis occupation of Greece, entered Organisation X, but Calivratakis considers that this information has not been proven. According to Kallivretakis and Grigoriadis, during the Axis occupation of Greece, Papadopoulos worked in the Greek administration’s Patras office.

Along with other right-wing military officers, he participated in the creation of the nationalist right-wing secret IDEA organisation in the autumn of 1944, shortly after the country's liberation. Those 1940 officers who took refuge in the Kingdom of Egypt along with King Geórgios II immediately after the German invasion, had become generals when their still-colonel former classmates undertook the coup of 1967.

Post-Second World War career
He was promoted to captain in 1946; and in 1949, during the Greek Civil War, to major. (See also Greek military ranks.) He served in the KYP Intelligence Service from 1959 to 1964 as the main contact between the KYP and the top CIA operative in Greece, John Fatseas, after training at the CIA in 1953.

Trials and tribulations: The Beloyannis affair
Major Papadopoulos, as he then was, was also a member of the court-martial in the first trial of the well-known Greek communist leader Nikos Beloyannis, in 1951. At that trial, Beloyannis was sentenced to death for the crime of being a member of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which was banned at that time in Greece following the Greek Civil War. The death sentence pronounced after this trial was not carried out, but Beloyannis was put on trial again in early 1952, this time for alleged espionage, following the discovery of radio transmitters used by undercover Greek communists to communicate with the exiled leadership of the Party in the Soviet Union. At the end of this trial, he was sentenced to death and immediately taken out and shot. Papadopoulos was not involved in this second trial. The Beloyannis trials were highly controversial in Greece, and many Greeks consider that, like many Greek communists at the time, Beloyannis was shot for his political beliefs, rather than any real crimes. The trial was by military court-martial under Greek anti-insurgency legislation enacted at the time of the Greek Civil War, which remained in force even though the war had ended.

Rise to colonel in the 1960s
In 1956, Papadopoulos took part in a failed coup attempt against King Pávlos. In 1958, he helped create the Office of Military Studies, a surveillance authority, under General Gogousis. It was from this same office that the subsequently successful coup of 21 April 1967 emanated.

In 1964, Papadopoulos was transferred to an artillery division in Western Thrace by a decree of Defense Minister Garoufalias, a member of the Centre Union (EK). In June 1965, days before the onset of the major political turmoil known as Apostasia, he made national headlines after arresting two soldiers under his command and eight leftist civilians from settlements near his military camp, on charges that they had conspired to sabotage army vehicles by pouring sugar into the vehicles' petrol tanks. The ten were imprisoned and tortured, but it was eventually proven that Papadopoulos himself had sabotaged the vehicles. Andreas Papandreou wrote in his memoirs that Papadopoulos wanted to prove that under the Centre Union (EK) government, the Communists had been left free to undermine national security. Even after this scandal, Papadopoulos was not discharged from the army since the Prime Minister, Geórgios Papandreou, forgave him as a compatriot of his father. In 1967, Papadopoulos was promoted to colonel.

21 April 1967: Coup d'état

That same year, on 21 April, a month before the general elections, Colonel Papadopoulos, along with fellow middle-ranking Army officers, led a successful coup, taking advantage of the volatile political situation that had arisen from a conflict between the young King Constantine II and the popular former Prime Minister, Geórgios Papandreou. Papadopoulos used his power gained from the coup to try to place Papandreou under house arrest and re-engineer the Greek political landscape rightward. Papadopoulos, along with the other junta members, are known in Greece by the term Aprilianoi ('Aprilians'), denoting the month of the coup. The term Aprilianoi has become synonymous with the term "dictators of 1967–1974".

Regime of the Colonels
King Constantine appointed a new government nominally headed by Konstantinos Kollias. However, from the early stages, Papadopoulos was the strongman of the new regime. He was appointed Minister of National Defense and Minister of the Presidency in the Kollias government, and his position was further enhanced after the King's abortive counter-coup on 13 December, when Papadopoulos replaced Kollias as Prime Minister. Not content with that, on 21 March 1972, he nominated himself Regent of Greece, succeeding General Geórgios Zoitakis. Torture of political prisoners in general, and communists in particular, was not out of the question. Examples included severe beatings, isolation and, according to some sources, pulling out fingernails.

"Patient in a cast" and other metaphors
Throughout his tenure as the junta strongman, Papadopoulos often employed what have been described by the BBC as gory surgical metaphors, where he or the junta assumed the role of the "medical doctor". The "patient" was Greece. Typically, Papadopoulos or the junta portrayed themselves as the "doctor" who operated on the "patient" by putting the patient's "foot" in an orthopedic cast and applying restraints on the "patient", tying him on a surgical bed and putting him under anesthesia to perform the "operation" so that the life of the "patient" would not be "endangered" during the operation. In one of his famous speeches, Papadopoulos mentioned:  "'ευρισκόμεθα προ ενός ασθενούς, τον οποίον έχομεν επί χειρουργικής κλίνης, και τον οποίον εάν ο χειρουργός δεν προσδέση κατά την διάρκειαν της εγχειρήσεως και της ναρκώσεως επί της χειρουργικής κλίνης, υπαρχει πιθανότης αντί δια της εγχειρήσεως να του χαρίσει την αποκατάστασιν της υγείας, να τον οδηγήσει εις θάνατον. [...] Οι περιορισμοί είναι η πρόσδεσις του ασθενούς επί κλίνης δια να υποστή ακινδύνως την εγχείρισιν" Translated as: "“...We are in front of a patient, whom we have on a surgical bed, and whom if the surgeon does not strap on the surgical bed during the time of the surgery and the anesthesia, there is a chance instead of the surgery granting him the restoration of his health, to lead him to his death [...] The restrictions are the straps, keeping the patient tied to the surgical bed so that he will undergo the surgery without danger." In the same speech Papadopoulos continued: "'Ασθενή έχομεν. Εις τον γύψον τον εβάλαμεν. Τον δοκιμάζομεν εάν ημπορεί να περπατάει χωρίς τον γύψον. Σπάζομεν τον αρχικόν γύψον και ξαναβάζομεν ενδεχομένως τον καινούργιο εκεί όπου χρειάζεται Το Δημοψήφισμα θα είναι μία γενική θεώρησις των ικανοτήτων του ασθενούς. Ας προσευχηθώμεν να μη χρειάζεται ξανά γύψον. Εάν χρειάζεται, θα του τον βάλομεν. Και το μόνον που ημπορώ να σας υποσχεθώ, είναι να σας καλέσω να ειδήτε και σεις το πόδι χωρίς γύψον!" which translates as follows: "'We have a patient. We test him if he can walk without a plaster cast. We break the initial cast and, if warranted, we put another cast where is needed. The referendum will be a general overview of the capabilities of the patient. Let us pray that he may not need a cast again. If he needs one, we will put one on him. And the only thing I can promise you, is to invite you to see the foot without a cast!" Other metaphors contained religious imagery related to the resurrection of Christ at Easter: "Χριστός Ανέστη – Ελλάς Ανέστη" translating as "Christ has risen – Greece has risen", alluding that the junta would "save" Greece and resurrect her into a greater, new Land. The theme of rebirth was used many times as a standard reply to avoid answering any questions as to how long the dictatorship would last: "Διότι αυτό το τελευταίον είναι υπόθεσις άλλων. Είναι υποθέσεις εκείνων, οι οποίοι έθεσαν την θρυαλλίδα εις την δυναμίτιδα δια την έκρηξιν προς αναγέννησιν της Πολιτείας την νύκτα της 21 Απριλίου." Translated as: "Because the latter is someone else's concern. They are the concerns of those, who lit the fuse of the dynamite for the explosion which led to the rebirth of the State the night of 21 April 1967." The religious themes and rebirth metaphors are also seen in the following: "Αι υποχρεώσεις μας περιγράφονται και από την θρησκείαν και από την ιστορίαν μας. Ομόνοιαν και αγάπην διδάσκει ο Χριστός. Πίστιν εις την Πατρίδα επιτάσσει η Ιστορία μας. [...] η Ελλάς αναγεννάται, η Ελλάς θα μεγαλουργήσει, η Ελλάς πάντα θα ζει." Translated as: "Our obligations are described by both our history and our religion. Christ teaches Harmony and Love. Our history demands faith in our country. [...] Greece is being reborn, Greece will accomplish great things, Greece will live forever."

Assassination attempt

A failed assassination attempt against Papadopoulos was perpetrated by Alexandros Panagoulis in the morning of 13 August 1968, when Papadopoulos was driven from his summer residence in Lagonisi to Athens, escorted by his personal security motorcycles and cars. Panagoulis ignited a bomb at a point of the coastal road where the limousine carrying Papadopoulos would have to slow down, but the bomb failed to harm Papadopoulos. Panagoulis was captured a few hours later in a nearby sea cave, since the boat sent to help him escape was instructed to leave at a specific time and he couldn't swim there on time due to strong sea currents. After his arrest, he was taken to the Greek Military Police (EAT-ESA) offices where he was questioned, beaten and tortured. On 17 November 1968, Panagoulis was sentenced to death but was personally pardoned by Papadopoulos, served only five years in prison, and after democracy was restored was elected a member of Parliament. He was regarded as an emblematic figure of the struggle to restore democracy, and as such has often been paralleled to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, two ancient Athenians known for their assassination of Hipparchus, brother of the tyrant Hippias.

Normalisation and attempts at liberalisation

Despite his heavy-handed rule, Papadopoulos was one of the more moderate members of the junta. He had indicated as early as 1968 that he was eager for reform.Ioannis Tzortzis, "The Metapolitefsi that never was" quote: "The Americans asked the Greek government to allow the use of their bases in Greek territory and air space to supply Israel; Markezinis, backed by Papadopoulos, denied on the grounds of maintaining good relations with the Arab countries. This denial is said to have turned the U.S. against Papadopoulos and Markezinis." quote#2:"Thus the students 'had played straight into the hands of Ioannidis, who looked upon the coming elections with a jaundiced eye.." quote3: "The latter (editor's note: i.e. Markezinis) would insist until the end of his life that subversion on behalf... ..Markezinis was known for his independence [from] U.S. interests" quote 4: "In that situation Ioannidis was emerging as a solution for the officers in sharp contrast to Papadopoulos, whose accumulation 'of so many offices and titles' (President of Republic, Prime Minister, Minister of Defence) was harming the seriousness of the regime and giving it an unacceptable image, which was not left unexploited by its opponents." quote 5: "The first attempt of Papadopoulos to start a process of reform occurred in the spring of 1968. He was claiming that if the 'Revolution' stayed more than a certain time in power, it would lose its dynamics and transform into a 'regime,’ which was not in his intentions. He tried to implicate Markezinis in the attempt; however, he met the stiff resistance of the hardliners. Another attempt was again frustrated in the end of 1969 and the beginning of 1970; Papadopoulos was then disappointed and complaining, 'I am being subverted by my fellow Evelpides cadets!' As a result of this second failure, he considered resigning in the summer of 1970, complaining that he lacked any support from other leading figures, his own closest followers included. But the rest of the faction leaders renewed their trust [in] him" He had declared at the time that he did not want the Revolution of 21 April (as the coup was called by the junta's supporters) to become a 'regime'. Around the same time, he'd reached out to some old-line politicians, such as Spiros Markezinis. Several attempts to liberalise the regime during 1969 and 1970 were thwarted by the hardliners on the junta, including Ioannides. In fact, subsequent to his 1970 failed attempt at reform, he threatened to resign and was dissuaded only after the hardliners renewed their personal allegiance to him.

As internal dissatisfaction grew in the early 1970s, and especially after an abortive coup by the Navy in early 1973, Papadopoulos attempted to legitimise the regime by beginning a gradual "democratisation" (see also the article on the Metapolitefsi). On 1 June 1973, he abolished the monarchy and declared Greece a republic with himself as president. He was confirmed in office via a controversial referendum. He furthermore sought the support of the old political establishment, but secured only the cooperation of Markezinis, who became Prime Minister. Concurrently, many restrictions were lifted and the army's role significantly reduced. An interim constitution created a presidential republic. The president would serve an eight-year term, and was vested with sweeping—almost dictatorial—powers. The decision to return to (at least nominal) civilian rule and the restriction of the army's role did not go nearly far enough for those who wanted full democracy. At the same time, this move was resented by many of the regime's supporters, whose dissatisfaction with Papadopoulos would become evident a few months later.

Ties to US intelligence
Papadopoulos is widely reported to have had certain ties to the Central Intelligence Agency, and has also been reported to have undergone military and intelligence training in the United States during the 1950s.

On 1 July 1973, The Observer published an investigative journalism article that accused the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of engineering the 1967 coup, further writing that Papadopoulos was known among senior officials in the Joint United States Military Aid Assistance Group in Athens as "the first CIA agent to become Premier of a European country". The following day, during CIA agent William Colby's confirmation hearings to be Director of Central Intelligence, Colby was asked in response to the article if there was any justification for the assertions. Colby denied that the CIA had engineered the coup or that Papadopoulos was either a CIA agent or otherwise paid by the CIA, adding that "[Papadopoulos] has been an official of the Greek Government at various times, and in those periods from time to time we worked with him in his official capacity.".

In 1977, John M. Maury, a CIA agent who was Chief of Station in Athens during the coup, wrote in an article in The Washington Post that the CIA had considered swaying the elections to prevent Papandreou from winning by promoting moderate candidates. The agency ultimately decided against the plan. As the election drew near, CIA agents were vaguely prodded by their Greek contacts about the possibility of a coup. Maury argues that the CIA's choice to officially condemn suggestions of a military takeover and remain uninvolved led to the agency being taken by surprise by the events of April 21, 1967. He concludes: "That we seriously attempted neither to influence nor to injure them is still taken by Greeks of all kinds as proof of U.S. complicity, or at least acquiescence, in the excesses of the dictatorship. And when the dictatorship eventually fell, to the shame of its perceived U.S. support was added the humiliation of perceived U.S. defeat."

A detailed study by Alexis Papachelas argues that Andreas Papandreou's claim of U.S. involvement "is wildly at variance with the facts": according to the study, U.S. officials had contemplated but rejected using the CIA to weaken the leftist flank of the Centre Union Party associated with Andreas, eventually determining that a prospective Centre Union government under Geórgios Papandreou would not pave the way for a takeover by Greek communists. As late as 20 April 1967, the U.S. embassy was instructed to pressure King Constantine II "to accept the popular will and keep the army in its barracks." U.S. officials were reportedly stunned by the coup on 21 April because, while aware of coup plotting within Greek military circles, they never expected Greek officers to act independently of the monarchy.

Fall of the Papadopoulos regime
After the events of the student uprising of 17 November at the National Technical University of Athens (see Athens Polytechnic uprising), the dictatorship was overthrown on 25 November 1973 by hardline elements in the Army. The outcry over Papadopoulos's extensive reliance on the army to quell the student uprising gave Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis a pretext to oust him and replace him as the new strongman of the regime. Papadopoulos was put under house arrest at his villa, while Greece returned to an "orthodox" military dictatorship.

After democracy was restored in 1974, during the period of Metapolitefsi ("regime change"), Papadopoulos and his cohorts were arrested and were eventually put on trial for high treason, mutiny, torture, and other crimes and misdemeanors.

On 23 August 1975, he and several others were found guilty and were sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.

Personal life
In 1942, after 3 years of courtship and 6 months of engagement, he married Niki Vasileiadi (died 2015), originally from Ilion of Asia Minor. Together they had a son, Christos (born 1943), a chemist, who lives in the United States and Chrysoula (1945-2004). In 1954, he met and entered into a relationship with Despina Sereti (née Gaspari) (1930-2023), an employee of the Hellenic Intelligence Service and the Geographical Service of the Greek Army, at the time Papadopoulos was posted to the Artillery Division of the VI Division, with the rank of Major. Together they had a daughter out of wedlock, Hypermachia. Since then, he was estranged from Vasileiadi.

Divorce by decree rumors
The separation, however lengthy, could not lead to divorce at first because, under Greece's restrictive divorce laws of that era, spousal consent was required. It is claimed that, as a remedy to the issue, in 1970, as Prime Minister of the dictatorship, he decreed a custom-made divorce law with a strict time limit (and a built-in sunset clause) that enabled him to get the divorce. After having served its purpose, the law eventually expired automatically. Those reports are contradicted by a 1975 article by Makedonia, which claims that Vasiliadi had filed for divorce on the 19th of September 1969, with the divorce being granted by the Athens Court of First Instance on the 27th of October of the same year on "joint liability" grounds. Makedonia's claims are further corroborated by the failure of newer sources to provide the decree specifics (type, number, Efimeris tis Kyverniseos Issue number). Such rumors are baseless in the case of Papadopoulos' divorce, but in 1972 a bill that would allow divorces on the basis of long-term separation (featuring a built-in sunset clause) was put forward by the government, only to meet the opposition of the Church of Greece. Such a law (but without a sunset clause) came to be only in 1979, a decade after the divorce of Vasileiadi and Papadopoulos.

In March 1970 he married Gaspari, with whom he lived throughout the years of his separation from Vasileiadi. Gaspari, immediately after the wedding, informally assumed the role of First Lady of Greece, until his overthrow in November 1973. They remained married until his death.

Death
Papadopoulos showed no remorse and steadfastly refused to apply for parole or amnesty or to use the leniency provisions that allowed him to be released on the grounds of ill health, as did several of his associates, such as Makarezos and Zoitakis. In the summer of 1996, his health deteriorated and he was diagnosed with ALS and bladder cancer, resulting in his being hospitalized for three years in an Athens hospital until his death on June 27, 1999. He was buried in First Cemetery of Athens three days later, in the presence of old associates and regime sympathisers.

Legacy
Today, Papadopoulos is a symbol of authoritarianism and xenophobia. The far right praises him for promoting Greek culture, arresting political enemies, and fighting democracy. After the restoration of democracy, some support for his type of politics remained which was, for a time, bolstered by the National Political Union (EPEN), a small political party that declared him its honorary leader. The EPEN eventually dissolved, with supporters scattering to various other political parties such as the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) and criminal organisations like Golden Dawn (XA).

title: Georgios Papadopoulos


text:
Red Tory

A Red Tory is an adherent of a centre-right or paternalistic-conservative political philosophy derived from the Tory tradition, most predominantly in Canada but also in the United Kingdom where it is more commonly known as one nation conservatism. This philosophy tends to favour communitarian social policies, while maintaining a degree of fiscal discipline and a respect of social and political order. It is contrasted with "Blue Tory" or "High Tory". Some Red Tories view themselves as small-c conservatives.

In Canada, Red Toryism is found in provincial and federal Conservative political parties. The history of Red Toryism marks differences in the development of the political cultures of Canada and the United States. Canadian conservatism and American conservatism have been different from each other in fundamental ways, including their stances on social issues and the role of government in society.

Red Tory governments in Canada, such as those of John A. Macdonald, Robert Borden, and John Diefenbaker, were known for supporting an active role for the government in the economy. This included the creation of government-owned and operated Crown Corporations such as the Canadian National Railway, and the development and protection of Canadian industries with programs such as the National Policy.

The adjective "red" refers to the economically left-leaning nature of Red Toryism in comparison with Blue Toryism, since socialist and other leftist parties have traditionally used the colour red. In Canada today, however, red is commonly associated with the Liberal Party. The term reflects the broad ideological range traditionally found within conservatism in Canada.

Philosophy
Historically, Canadian conservatism has been derived from the Tory tradition, with a distinctive concern for a balance between individual rights and collectivism, as mediated through a traditional pre-industrial standard of morality – which has never been as evident in American conservatism.

Red Toryism derives largely from a classical conservative tradition that maintained that the unequal division of wealth and political privilege among social classes can be justified if members of the privileged class practiced noblesse oblige and contributed to the common good. Red Tories supported traditional institutions such as religion and the monarchy, and maintenance of the social order. This position was later manifested in their support for some aspects of the welfare state. This belief in a common good, as expanded on in Colin Campbell and William Christian's Political Parties and Ideologies in Canada, is at the root of Red Toryism.

Origins
In distinction to the American experience where class divisions were seen as undemocratic (although still existing), Canadian Tories adopted a more paternalistic view of government. Monarchy, public order and good government – understood as dedication to the common good – preceded, moderated and balanced a belief in individual rights and liberty. Anthony Hall has argued that Red Toryism in Canada developed specifically in opposition to the American Revolution and its ideology.

This type of Canadian conservatism is derived largely from the Tory tradition developed by English conservative thinkers and statesmen such as Richard Hooker; the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury; and Benjamin Disraeli, later the first Earl of Beaconsfield. The primary influences on Canadian Toryism in the Victorian age were Disraeli's One Nation Conservatism and the radical Toryism advocated by Lord Randolph Churchill. Inherent in these Tory traditions was the ideal of noblesse oblige and a conservative communitarianism.

In Victorian times these ideas were the pre-eminent strains of conservative thought in the British Empire, and were advanced by many in the Tory faction of John A. Macdonald's conservative coalition in the Canadas. None of this lineage denies that Tory traditions of communitarianism and collectivism had existed in the British North American colonies since the Loyalist exodus from the American colonies between 1776 and 1796. It is this aspect that is one of the primary points of difference between the conservative political cultures of Canada and the United States.

The explicit notion of a "Red" Toryism was developed by Gad Horowitz in the 1960s, who argued that there was a significant Tory ideology in Canada. This vision contrasted Canada with the United States, which was seen as lacking this collectivist tradition because it was expunged from the American political culture after the American Revolution and the exodus of the United Empire Loyalists. Horowitz argued that Canada's stronger socialist movement grew from Toryism, and that this explains why socialism has never had much electoral success in the United States. This also meant that Canadian conceptions of liberty were more collective and communitarian, and could be seen as more directly derivative of the English tradition, than that of American practices and theories.

Horowitz identified George Grant and Eugene Forsey as exemplars of this strain of thought, which saw a central role for Christianity in public affairs and was profoundly critical of capitalism and the dominant business élites. Forsey became a Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) member, while Grant remained a Conservative – although he became disdainful of an overall shift in policy toward liberal economics and continentalism, something Forsey saw happening decades earlier. When the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker fell in 1963, largely due to the BOMARC controversy, Grant wrote Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, a book about the nature of traditional Canadian nationhood and independence that would become a lodestar of Red Toryism. Grant defined an essential difference between the founding of the Canadian and American nations when he wrote "Canada was predicated on the rights of nations as well as on the rights of individuals." This definition recognized Canada's multi-faceted founding nature as an English-speaking, aboriginal and Francophone nation.

Predominance and decline

Many of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada's leaders have been labelled 'Red Tories', including Sir Robert Borden, John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark. Many others have been influential as cabinet ministers and thinkers, such as Davie Fulton, Dalton Camp, Roy McMurtry and John Farthing. The main bastions of Red Toryism were Ontario, the Atlantic provinces and urban Manitoba, areas where the Red Tories dominated provincial politics, and in some federal elections Quebec, where the federal PC party operated largely separately from provincial politics. During 42 years, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario was led by Red Tories such as George A. Drew, Leslie Frost, John Robarts and Bill Davis, all of which supported increased funding for infrastructure, health care and education. Throughout the Atlantic provinces, traditional Red Tories are the dominant force in the provincial Progressive Conservative parties because of their support of the welfare state. As premier of Nova Scotia from 1956 to 1967, Red Tory Robert Stanfield introduced reforms for education, health care and civil liberties. The Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta included a broad spectrum from Red Tories to social conservatives, but Peter Lougheed who led the party from 1968 to 1985 and was Premier from 1971 to 1985 was a Red Tory and Lougheed's tenure was characterized by active economic measures and social reforms. In the 50's and 60's, Manitoba saw great prosperity in economic and social reforms thanks to the leadership of Premier Dufferin Roblin, a Red Tory, who governed to the left of the previous government led by Douglas Campbell, the leader of the Liberal-Progressive coalition.

The dominance of Red Toryism can be seen as a part of the international post-war consensus that saw the welfare state embraced by the major parties of most of the western world. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, the federal Progressive Conservative Party suffered a string of electoral defeats under Red Tory leaders Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark. Pressure began to grow within the party for a new approach. Clark's leadership was successfully challenged, and in the 1983 PC leadership convention, members endorsed Brian Mulroney who rejected free trade with the United States as proposed by another Blue Tory candidate, John Crosbie. Despite this early perception, the eagerness in which Mulroney's ministry embraced the Macdonald Commission's advocacy of bilateral free trade would come to indicate a sharp drift toward libertarian or liberal economic policies, comparable to such contemporaries as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

Following Mulroney, the Canadian conservative movement suffered a profound schism in the 1993 election, splitting into the distinct Progressive Conservative and Reform parties. The Red Tory tradition remained loyal to the Progressive Conservatives, while many "blue" Tories aligned with social conservatives in the Reform Party. Various Unite the Right efforts achieved only modest success in the 1990s and early 2000s – most notably, while the creation of the Canadian Alliance in 2000 attracted a small number of Progressive Conservatives, it failed to attract those in the Red Tory tradition or to replace the Progressive Conservatives.

Following the victory of Peter MacKay at the 2003 PC convention, and in violation of an informal contract signed with rival candidate David Orchard, MacKay merged the Tories with Stephen Harper's Alliance to create the modern federal Conservative Party in 2003. When first created, one of the most important issues facing the Conservative Party was what Red Tories would do. The union resulted in a number of Red Tories leaving the new party, either to retire or to cross the floor to the Liberal Party. Members of Parliament (MPs) André Bachand, John Herron, Joe Clark and Scott Brison declined to join the new party – Brison immediately crossed the floor to the Liberals, Bachand and Clark sat out the remainder of the 37th Canadian Parliament as Progressive Conservatives and then retired from office in the 2004 election, and Herron sat as a Progressive Conservative for the remainder of the term but then ran for re-election in 2004 as a Liberal.

Clark, a former Prime Minister, gave a tepid endorsement to the Liberals in the 2004 election, calling Paul Martin "the devil we know". Rick Borotsik joined the new party but openly criticized it from within, did not run for re-election in 2004, and also publicly endorsed the Liberals over the Conservatives during the campaign. Additionally, three of the twenty-six Progressive Conservative Senators, Lowell Murray, Norman Atkins and William Doody, decided to continue serving as Progressive Conservatives, rejecting membership in the new party. Atkins, who died in 2010, remained allied with the still-existent Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, and Murray, from Atlantic Canada, opposed the merger of the federal PC party. Most, like prominent Senator Marjory LeBreton, came to endorse the new party and have been vocal and visible supporters of the party both between and during elections. Elaine McCoy and Nancy Ruth were later appointed to the Senate by Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, and chose to designate themselves as Progressive Conservatives. Doody has since died, and Ruth joined the Conservative Party caucus in 2006.

Despite the union, some former Progressive Conservative members still identify themselves as Red Tory, including high-profile political strategist turned Senator Hugh Segal, who in 2013 continued to describe himself as a Red Tory, which has put him at increasing odds with the government on several occasions.

A 'grassroots' movement of dissenting Red Tories, who opposed the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada's merger with the Canadian Alliance, gathered signatures on Elections Canada forms from over 200 Progressive Conservative members and applied to re-register as the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. This name was refused by Elections Canada. Having anticipated such a rejection, the coordinators had had the 'SignaTories' also sign a second application to at least continue with the ballot name "PC Party". On March 26, 2004, the Progressive Canadian Party was registered with Elections Canada. It aimed to be perceived as a continuation of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, but achieved only very minor results. The party achieved its largest vote to date in the 2006 election, with 14,151 votes in 25 ridings (about 0.1% of the nationwide total). The party was deregistered by the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on November 30, 2019, for failing to comply with Canada Elections Act requirements set out in subsection 415(1).

Revival in provincial politics
In the wake of the rise of the conservative Wildrose Party in Alberta in the 2010s, the term "Red Tory" has been revived as a name of the moderate wing of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, which was seen to be in ascendence under the leadership of Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford. Redford is closely associated with centrist Tories Joe Clark and Peter Lougheed, as opposed to Wildrose leader Danielle Smith's association with right-wing Tories Ralph Klein and Tom Flanagan. Redford was called a Red Tory by Chantal Hébert, Ezra Levant and others.

The Progressive Conservative Association of Nova Scotia under Tim Houston, branding themselves as Red Tories, won a majority government in the 2021 Nova Scotia general election. Houston's Progressive Conservatives campaigned on using provincial resources to improve healthcare services.

United Kingdom
In 2009, Phillip Blond promoted communitarian traditionalist conservative ideas within the Conservative Party with a book titled Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It and by creating the think-tank ResPublica. Leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron spoke at ResPublica's launch and Red Tory ideas were said to be a major influence on him.

In Scotland, the term "Red Tory" has been used to describe the Scottish Labour Party, who some see as assisting with, or failing to oppose, certain Conservative policies. The term was first used in this context by Scottish independence supporters, following Labour's participation in the Better Together campaign in opposition to Scottish independence alongside the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

Evolving from the Scottish usage of the term, the term, along with the terms Blairite, Brownite and "centrist", have been used, particularly on social media by members on the political left of the Labour Party to refer to MPs and Labour Party figures who withheld support for Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader from 2015 to 2020. The term has also been used as a pejorative against current Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has been seen by some to have moved the party too far away from traditional left-wing positions.

Definition drift
The term Red Tory is often used today in the Canadian media not to refer to those in the tradition of George Grant, Dalton Camp or Robert Stanfield, but simply to moderates in the conservative movement, particularly those who reject or do not sufficiently embrace social conservatism. For example, in the 2004 Conservative Party leadership election, Tony Clement was sometimes referred to as a Red Tory even though he advocated privatization, tax cuts and the curtailment of social and economic development spending. Traditional Red Tories would reject most if not all of these stances.

More recently Phillip Blond, director of British think tank ResPublica, has gained traction with his so-called Red Tory thesis which criticizes what he refers to as the welfare state and the market state. Phillip Blond promotes a radical communitarian traditionalist conservatism. It inveighs against welfare states as well as market monopolies and instead respects traditional values and institutions, localism, devolution of powers from the central governments to local communities, small businesses, and volunteerism. Blond also favours empowering social enterprises, charities and other elements of civil society to solve problems such as poverty. He has been mentioned as a major influence on the thinking of David Cameron and other Tories in the wake of the 2008 credit crisis. He advocates a civic state as the ideal, where the common good of society is valued and solutions emerge from local communities. Blond's ideas also parallel the socioeconomic tradition of distributism, as is evidenced by Blond's appearance at a distributist conference at Oxford University in 2009 sponsored by the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture. Blond's Red Toryism has been embraced by traditionalist conservatives in the United States, such as economist John Medaille.

The editors of the web log Front Porch Republic, however, define Red Toryism as a "left or socialist conservatism" and further go on to say that it is "not a traditionalism that happened to oddly pick up a few egalitarian rhetorical tropes along the way." This is more in keeping with the typical dictionary definition of the term as: "(Canadian) a Conservative who holds liberal or mildly socialist views on certain fiscal and social issues." In this regard, Phillip Blond's views are probably closer to what has been referred to as High Tory.

title: Red Tory


text:
American Society of Cinematographers

The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), founded in Hollywood in 1919, is a cultural, educational, and professional organization that is neither a labor union nor a guild. The society was organized to advance the science and art of cinematography and gather a wide range of cinematographers to discuss techniques and ideas and to advocate for motion pictures as a type of art form. Currently, the president of the ASC is Shelly Johnson.

Members use the post-nominal letters "ASC". On the 1920 film titled Sand, cinematographer Joseph H. August, who was an original member of the ASC, became the first individual to have the "ASC" appear after his name on the onscreen credit.

Only film cinematographers and special effect supervisors can become an ASC member. Basic requirements include being a director of photography for a minimum five out of the last eight years, having a high professional reputation and being recommended by three active or retired ASC members.

History
In the beginning of cinema, directors and photographers in the United States had a similar problem: they had "big, ugly white streaks" that resulted from static electricity discharged from the cameras. Two separate groups in the United States worked together to find a solution to this problem. The two groups were the Cinema Camera Club and the Static Club of America.

A precursor to the ASC, the Cinema Camera Club in New York City was founded in 1913 by Arthur Miller, Phil Rosen, and Frank Kugler. Arthur and his brother, William Miller, both filmmakers in New York City, worked together and established a union for cinematography workers called the Motion Picture Industry Union. Miller left to work in Hollywood, California, one year after the Motion Picture Industry Union was formed.

In 1918, Phil Rosen asked the president of the Cinema Camera Club of California, Charles Rosher, whether he could help reorganize the association by creating a national organization with "membership by invitation and a strong educational component". This reorganisation and the setup of the bylaws occurred on December 21, 1918. The ASC was officially authorized by the State of California on January 8, 1919.

In 2014, the ASC admitted its first member with no background in live action feature film, Pixar's Sharon Calahan, who had worked entirely in computer animation. The society started the ASC Master Class education program in the same year (2014). This program allows members of the ASC and other professionals to teach students from all walks of life on various subjects including composition, lighting, angles, creating mood among other techniques of visual storytelling.

In 2017, John Bailey, an ASC member, was elected as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, making him the first cinematographer to take up such a position.

Publications
In the 1920s, the ASC began printing a four-page newsletter titled The American Cinematographer in 1920. According to the ASC, "The American Cinematographer covers the technology and artistry of visual storytelling, offering print and digital editions." Within this publication, a wide range of cinematographer and technical information was produced through a variety of means such as interviews, articles, blogs and podcasts.

Other than the magazine, the ASC also publishes the American Cinematographer Manual. The first edition was published in 1935 by Jackson J. Rose as The American Cinematographer Hand Book and Reference Guide. The Hand Book evolved from the Cinematographic Annual only published twice, in 1930 and 1931. Rose's handbook went through nine editions by the middle of the 1950s, and it was from this book that the modern American Cinematographer Manual originated. The first edition of the new manual was published in 1960 and is now in its 11th edition, published in 2022.

Founding members

 * Phil Rosen
 * Homer Scott
 * William C. Foster
 * L. D. Clawson
 * Eugene Gaudio
 * Walter L. Griffin
 * Roy H. Klaffki
 * Charles Rosher
 * Victor Milner
 * Joe August
 * Arthur Edeson
 * Fred LeRoy Granville
 * J. D. Jennings
 * Robert S. Newhard
 * L. Guy Willy

Film

 * Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases
 * Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Non-Fiction Filmmaking
 * Spotlight Award

Television

 * Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Episode of a Series for Commercial Television
 * Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Episode of a Series for Non-Commercial Television
 * Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Motion Picture, Miniseries, or Pilot Made for Television
 * Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Episode of a Half Hour Series for Television

Other

 * Award of Distinction
 * Board of the Governors Award
 * Honorary Membership
 * International Award
 * Lifetime Achievement Award
 * President's Award
 * Television Career Achievement Award

title: American Society of Cinematographers


text:
Troika

Troika or troyka (from Russian тройка, meaning 'a set of three' or the digit '3') may refer to:

Cultural tradition

 * Troika (dance), a Russian folk dance
 * Troika (driving), a traditional Russian harness driving combination, a cultural icon of Russia

Politics

 * Triumvirate, a political regime ruled or dominated by three powerful individuals, usually troika in the context of the Soviet Union and Russia
 * Troika (Bosnia and Herzegovina), a three-party alliance in Bosnia and Herzegovina
 * Troika (Soviet leadership), one of the temporary triumvirates in the Soviet Union
 * Troika (Tunisia), a three-party alliance that governed Tunisia from 2011 to 2014
 * European troika, the decision group formed by the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
 * OSCE troika, the leadership of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe: the chairman-in-office and the previous and incoming chairmen-in-office
 * NKVD troika, a commission of three for express judgment in the Soviet Union during the time of Joseph Stalin
 * "The troika" during the U.S. presidency of Ronald Reagan: James Baker, Ed Meese, and Michael Deaver
 * Troika of tyranny, a term coined by John R. Bolton for three Central and South American nations (Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela)

Literature

 * The Troika, a 1997 novel by Stepan Chapman
 * Troika, a 1979 novel by David Gurr
 * Troika, a 2011 novella by Alastair Reynolds
 * Troika, the fourth novel of the Indigo Saga by Louise Cooper
 * Tale of the Troika, a novel by Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Music

 * "Troika", the first movement of The Blizzard suite by Georgy Sviridov (1974, movie version — 1964)
 * Troika (Julia Kogan album), 2011
 * Troika (D'Virgilio, Morse & Jennings album), 2022
 * "Troika", the fourth movement of Suite from Lieutenant Kijé by Prokofiev
 * "Troika", the eleventh movement of The Seasons by Tchaikovsky

Other uses in arts and entertainment

 * Troika (video game), a 1991 video game
 * Troika, a painting by Vasily Perov
 * Troika (series), a 2010 Israeli-Russian short TV series by Leonid Prudovsky
 * Troyka, a British jazz band featuring pianist Kit Downes
 * Troika (1930 film), a German drama film
 * Troika (1969 film), an American experimental comedy film by Fredric Hobbs

Businesses

 * Troika Games, a video games developer 1998–2005
 * Troika Pottery, a Cornish pottery company 1963–1983
 * Troika Dialog, the former name of Sberbank CIB, a multinational investment banking and asset management firm

Other uses

 * Troika (chocolate), a confection by Nidar AS, Norway
 * Troika (crater), on Mars
 * Troika (ride), an amusement park ride
 * The Troika (Kuala Lumpur), a condominium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
 * Troika card, a contactless reusable card designed to pay for public transport in Moscow, Russia
 * VAZ-2103, a Soviet sedan car nicknamed Troika

title: Troika


text:
Bonneville Power Administration

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is an American federal agency operating in the Pacific Northwest. BPA was created by an act of Congress in 1937 to market electric power from the Bonneville Dam located on the Columbia River and to construct facilities necessary to transmit that power. Congress has since designated Bonneville to be the marketing agent for power from all of the federally owned hydroelectric projects in the Pacific Northwest. Bonneville is one of four regional Federal power marketing agencies within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

[[File:Bonneville Power Administration (system map, October 2020).svg|300px|thumb|right|Map of the BPA service area (green) with facilities:

{{legend|#006a44|BPA transmission lines}} {{legend|#8c3f97|Non-BPA lines}} Federal dam]]

Operations
The power generated on BPA's grid is sold to public utilities, private utilities, and industry on the grid. The excess is sold to other grids in Canada, California and other regions. Because BPA is a public entity, it does not make a profit on power sales or from providing transmission services. BPA also coordinates with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to regulate flow of water in the Columbia River and to carry out environmental projects such as salmon restoration.

Although BPA is part of the DOE, it is self-funded and covers its costs by selling its products and services at cost. The BPA provides about 28% of the electricity used in the region. BPA transmits and sells wholesale electricity in eight western states: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. Its minimum wholesale rate is 3.49 cents per kilowatt-hour; the BPA generated $4.72 billion in operating revenue in 2022.

BPA now markets the electricity from thirty-one federal hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River and its tributaries, as well as from the Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear plant located on the Hanford Site in eastern Washington. BPA has more than 15,000 mi of electrical lines and 261 substations in the Pacific Northwest and controls approximately 75 percent of the high-voltage (230 kV and higher) transmission capacity in the region. 87 percent of the agency's sustained peak capacity (11,680 MW) is generated from hydroelectricity.

BPA also maintains connection lines with other power grids. It connects to the California high-voltage transmission system by Path 66, which consists of the two 500 kV AC lines of the Pacific AC Intertie, plus a third 500 kV AC line of the California-Oregon Transmission Project (COTP) (managed by the Balancing Authority of Northern California). Together these three lines are operated as the California-Oregon Intertie (COI) (managed by the California Independent System Operator CAISO). An additional DC ±500 kV line, the Pacific DC Intertie, links BPA's grid at the Celilo Converter Station near The Dalles, Oregon to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) grid 800 miles (1,300 km) away at the Sylmar Converter Station in Los Angeles.

The Northern Intertie crosses the Canada–US border in two locations at Blaine, Washington and Nelway, British Columbia and connects to two BC Hydro AC 500 kV lines and several lower voltage lines.

Because BPA owns and operates transmission equipment and locations, its workers perform its own vegetation management.

BPA uses helicopters to sling load maintenance workers inspecting and repairing power lines.

Facilities and projects
The BPA is the designated marketer for 31 hydroelectric dams and the Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power plant at the Hanford Site. The dams are owned and operated by either the Army Corps of Engineers (21 dams) or the Bureau of Reclamation (10 dams).

History
The Bonneville Project, named for the then-new Bonneville Dam, was established by an act of Congress that was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 20, 1936. The federal agency was created to market electricity from the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams based on the model of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). It would provide a flat rate for customer utilities and use revenue from these sales to pay off the bonds used by the federal government to finance the construction of dams in the Pacific Northwest. The agency's name was changed to the Bonneville Power Administration in 1940. Attempts to replace the BPA with a Columbia Valley Authority that more closely resembled the TVA were made in the 1940s and 1950s, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

BPA's first industrial sale was to Alcoa in January 1940, to provide 32,500 kilowatts of power. This, and the following 162,500 kilowatt order, led to complaints of the Bonneville Power Act's anti-monopoly clause. The cheap price of aluminum from Alcoa helped aluminum sales grow in the post-World War II market.

Overly optimistic estimates of future electricity consumption by BPA in the 1960s led the agency to guarantee some bonds for the disastrous Washington Public Power Supply System nuclear power project. Out of five nuclear power plants started (WNP-1 and WNP-4, WNP-3 and WNP-5), only WNP-2 was completed. BPA is still making payments on three of the abandoned plants. In 2003, BPA's debt for the nuclear project totaled $6.2 billion.

In 1973, the BPA commissioned TRW Inc. to write software for the PDP-10 mainframe computer that managed the agency's power grid; Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the software for the monitoring system, which remained in operation until its replacement in 2013.

In 2014, the BPA Library discovered a collection of old films made by the agency and began posting digital versions of them on the agency's website. Included in the collection is the award-winning documentary "River of Power" which covers the Agency's history from its beginning to the present.

The BPA gives its name to the BPA Trail in Federal Way, Washington, a walking trail built beneath power transmission lines.

Archives

 * Charles F. Luce papers. 1654–2000. 6.13 cubic feet.
 * Brock Adams papers. 1947–1993. 326.64 cubic feet (456 boxes).
 * George H. Barker Collection of Dam Construction Photographs and Ephemera. 1935-1952. 243 photographic prints, 18 newspaper clippings (1 box).

title: Bonneville Power Administration


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The Crow (1994 film)

The Crow is a 1994 American gothic superhero film directed by Alex Proyas and written by David J. Schow and John Shirley, based on the 1989 comic book series by James O'Barr. It stars Brandon Lee, in his final film role, as Eric Draven, a rock musician who is resurrected from the dead to seek vengeance against the gang who murdered him and his fiancée.

Lee was fatally wounded by a prop gun during filming. As he had finished most of his scenes, the film was completed through script rewrites, a stunt double and digital effects. After Lee's death, Paramount Pictures opted out of distribution and the rights were acquired by Miramax Films. The film is dedicated to Lee and his fiancée, Eliza Hutton.

The Crow was released in the United States on May 13, 1994 and received positive reviews. It grossed $94 million on a $23 million budget and has gained a cult following. The success led to a media franchise that includes the sequels The Crow: City of Angels (1996), The Crow: Salvation (2000), and The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005). The sequels, which mostly featured different characters and none of the original cast members, were unable to match the success of the first film. A reboot of The Crow is set for release in 2024.

Plot
On Devil's Night, in a crime-ravaged and decrepit Detroit, a young woman, Shelly Webster, is raped and seriously wounded while her rock musician fiancé Eric Draven is shot and thrown to his death from the window of their loft apartment. Police Sergeant Daryl Albrecht accompanies Shelly to the hospital, but she eventually dies from her injuries. A narration states the legend of a crow that carries souls to the land of the dead, but if the person died in tragic circumstances the crow can resurrect their restless spirit to set things right.

One year later, Shelly's and Eric's graves are visited by Sarah, a young girl the pair cared for due to her absent mother. A crow lands on Eric's gravestone and taps on it, resurrecting him. Disoriented and distressed, Eric returns to his ravaged loft apartment and experiences flashbacks of the murders: A gang of men—Tin Tin, Funboy, T-Bird, and Skank—targeted the pair because they were protesting forced evictions in their apartment building which the gang's leader, ruthless crime boss Top Dollar, intended to seize. Realizing that any injuries he suffers are immediately healed, Eric dons black-and-white face paint and sets out to avenge himself and Shelly, guided by the crow.

The crow leads Eric to Tin Tin, whom Eric stabs to death. He next travels to the pawn shop where Tin Tin had pawned Shelly's engagement ring. Eric recovers the ring and blows up the shop, but spares the owner Gideon so he can alert Top Dollar's men that Eric is coming for them. Albrecht begins investigating the apparent vigilante disturbances while Eric finds Funboy taking drugs with Sarah's estranged drug addict mother, Darla. He gives Funboy a fatal overdose and purges the drugs from Darla's body, telling her that Sarah needs her.

Eric visits Albrecht and confirms his suspicions regarding the vigilante's identity. Albrecht tells Eric that he stayed with Shelly until she died, witnessing the thirty hours of suffering she experienced. Eric touches Albrecht, absorbing the pain Shelly felt. Later, Eric saves Sarah from being hit by a car, revealing to her that he has returned. Eric next targets T-Bird, killing him in an explosion. The following morning, Sarah and Darla reconcile and Sarah reunites with Eric at his apartment. Top Dollar holds a meeting with his associates to discuss his plans to burn the city to the ground on Devil's Night. Eric arrives for Skank but a gunfight erupts, ending with Eric throwing Skank from a window to his death. Top Dollar, his lover and half-sister Myca, and his right-hand man Grange escape. Myca correctly hypothesizes that the crow is the source of Eric's immortality.

Satisfied with his vengeance, Eric gifts Shelly's engagement ring to Sarah and returns to his grave. Grange abducts Sarah as she is walking home and takes her to an abandoned church with Myca and Top Dollar, who takes Shelly's ring. Eric is alerted to her plight by the crow and rushes to rescue her, but he is ambushed by Grange who wounds the crow, rendering Eric vulnerable. Albrecht arrives and kills Grange, while Myca attempts to take the crow for its immortality; it claws her eyes out, causing her to fall to her death from the bell tower. Top Dollar retreats to the church roof with Sarah, where he fights and badly wounds Eric. Eric transfers Shelly's pain into Top Dollar, causing him to stumble off the roof and be impaled on a gargoyle, killing him.

Sarah and a wounded Albrecht are recovered from the church while a pained Eric goes to Shelly's grave where her spirit arrives to comfort him and return his body to rest. Sometime later, Sarah visits the graves and the crow returns Shelly's ring to her.

Cast

 * Brandon Lee as Eric Draven / The Crow
 * Rochelle Davis as Sarah Mohr
 * Ernie Hudson as Sergeant Daryl Albrecht
 * Michael Wincott as Top Dollar
 * Bai Ling as Myca
 * Sofia Shinas as Shelly Webster
 * Anna Levine as Darla Mohr
 * David Patrick Kelly as T-Bird
 * Angel David as Skank
 * Laurence Mason as Tin Tin
 * Michael Massee as Funboy
 * Tony Todd as Grange
 * Jon Polito as Gideon
 * Bill Raymond as Mickey
 * Marco Rodríguez as Detective Torres

Michael Berryman filmed scenes as the Skull Cowboy, Eric's spirit guide, but his scenes were cut from the finished film. Chad Stahelski was Brandon Lee's stunt double in several scenes.

Development
James O'Barr wrote what would become The Crow as a means to cope with the unexpected death of his fiancée, who was killed by a drunk driver. The first meeting O'Barr had with a major studio was quickly dismissed after the studio's vision for the film was a musical with Michael Jackson as the lead. Around the time of The Crow's publication, writer John Shirley pitched Angry Angel to Caliber Press, who turned it down due to similarities with The Crow. Shirley sought the comic out and decided to adapt it into a film. O'Barr was receptive and agreed to workshop the film with Shirley and producer Jeff Most, turning down a significant offer from New Line Cinema in the process. O'Barr oversaw three different script treatments by Shirley and Most before directly collaborating on the first two drafts of the screenplay. Shirley penned the third and fourth draft by himself which awarded him screenplay credit by the Writers Guild of America. Most claimed to have written a "substantial proportion" of the script, but was denied credit due to a rule in the WGA which prohibited producers from receiving credit. The addition of producer Edward Pressman gave The Crow further momentum, but Shirley would be fired during development after clashing with a development head at Pressman's studio. Splatterpunk writer David J. Schow was brought in for rewrites. From a suggestion by Most, Pressman primarily pursued music video and commercial directors to helm the film; Julien Temple being Most's top choice. Australian filmmaker Alex Proyas was hired to direct the film. Paramount Pictures picked up the distribution rights and slotted an August 1993 release date.

River Phoenix and Christian Slater were early considerations for the role of Eric Draven. Shirley and Most pushed for Slater while Pressman wanted River Phoenix. Brandon Lee was suggested to play Draven, but O'Barr was unconvinced fearing he wouldn't be suited for the material. However, Lee won O'Barr over and was given the role shortly thereafter. Lee dropped 20 pounds to portray Draven and worked closely with the crew to shape the film, co-choreographing his action sequences with Jeff Imada, performing most of his stunts, and removing a subplot due to its Asian stereotyping. Rochelle Davis, Ernie Hudson, Michael Wincott, Bai Ling, Sofia Shinas, Michael Massee, David Patrick Kelly, Tony Todd, and Jon Polito rounded out the supporting cast.

Filming
Production began on The Crow in February 1993 in Wilmington, North Carolina and was scheduled to last 54 days.

Brandon Lee's death
On March 31, 1993, at EUE Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, Lee was filming a scene where his character, Eric, is shot after witnessing the beating and rape of his fiancée. Actor Michael Massee's character Funboy fires a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 629 revolver at Lee as he walks into the room. A scene filmed two weeks before Lee's had called for the same gun to be shown in close-up. Revolvers often use dummy cartridges fitted with bullets, but no powder or primer, during close-ups as they look more realistic than blank rounds which have no bullet. Instead of purchasing commercial dummy cartridges, the film's prop crew, hampered by time and money constraints, created their own by pulling the bullets from live rounds, dumping the powder charge but not the primer, then reinserting the bullets. Witnesses reported that two weeks before Lee's death they saw an unsupervised actor pulling the trigger on the gun while it was loaded with the powderless but primed round. Having not removed the primer, the primer could detonate with enough energy to launch a bullet and lodge it in the barrel.

In the fatal scene, which called for the revolver to be actually fired at Lee from a distance of 12–15 feet, the dummy cartridges were exchanged for blank rounds, which feature a live powder charge and primer, but no bullet, thus allowing the gun to be fired without the risk of an actual projectile. As the production company had sent the firearms specialist home early, responsibility for the guns was given to a prop assistant who was unaware of the rule for inspecting all firearms before and after any handling. Therefore, the barrel was not checked for obstructions when the time came to load it with the blank rounds. Since the bullet from the dummy round was already trapped in the barrel (a condition known as a squib load), this caused the .44 Magnum bullet to be fired out of the barrel with virtually the same force as if the gun had been loaded with a live round, and it struck Lee in the abdomen, mortally wounding him.

After Lee's death, the producers were faced with the decision of whether or not to continue with the film. Lee had completed most of his scenes for the film and was scheduled to shoot for only three more days. The rest of the cast and crew, except for Ernie Hudson, whose brother-in-law had just died, stayed in Wilmington. Paramount Pictures, which was initially interested in distributing The Crow theatrically (originally a direct-to-video feature), opted out of involvement due to delays in filming and some controversy over the violent content being inappropriate given Lee's death. However, Miramax picked it up with the intention of releasing it in theatres and injected a further $8 million to complete the production, taking its budget to approximately $23 million. The cast and crew then took a break for script rewrites of the flashback scenes that had yet to be completed. The script was rewritten by Walon Green, Terry Hayes, René Balcer, and Michael S. Chernuchin, adding narration and new scenes. Lee's stunt double Chad Stahelski was used as a stand-in and digital face replacement was used to superimpose Lee's face onto the head of the double. The beginning of the movie, which had not been finished, was rewritten, and the apartment scene remade using computer graphics from an earlier scene of Lee.

A character from the original comic book called Skull Cowboy was originally planned to be part of the adaptation and even had scenes filmed. He acted as a guide for Eric Draven between the worlds of the dead and the living. He was set to be played by Michael Berryman, but the role was cut from the film due to Lee's death.

O'Barr later remarked that losing Lee was like losing his fiancée all over again, and he regretted ever writing the comic in the first place.

Box office
The film opened at number one in the United States in 1,573 theaters with $11,774,332 and averaging $7,485 per theater, making it Miramax's biggest ever opening. Some industry sources believed that Miramax overstated the weekend gross by as much as $1 million. The film ultimately grossed $50,693,129 in the United States and Canada, and $43 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $93.7 million against its budget of $23 million. It ranked at number 24 for all films released in the US in 1994, the 24th highest-grossing film worldwide for 1994 and number 10 for R-rated films released that year.

In Europe, the film grossed £1,245,403 in the United Kingdom (where it was 18-rated), and sold 4,604,115 tickets in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. In Seoul, South Korea, it sold 83,126 tickets.

Critical response
The Crow has an approval rating of on Rotten Tomatoes based on  reviews and an average rating of. The critical consensus states: "Filled with style and dark, lurid energy, The Crow is an action-packed visual feast that also has a soul in the performance of the late Brandon Lee." The film also has a score of 71 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Reviewers praised the action and visual style. Rolling Stone called it a "dazzling fever dream of a movie"; Caryn James, writing for The New York Times, called it "a genre film of a high order, stylish and smooth"; and Roger Ebert called it "a stunning work of visual style". The Los Angeles Times praised the film also.

Lee's death was alleged to have a melancholic effect on viewers; Desson Howe of The Washington Post wrote that Lee "haunts every frame" and James Berardinelli called the film "a case of 'art imitating death', and that specter will always hang over The Crow". Both Berardinelli and Howe called it an appropriate epitaph to Lee, and Ebert stated that not only was this Lee's best film, but it was better than any of his father's. Critics generally thought that this would have been a breakthrough film for Lee, although Berardinelli disagreed. The changes made to the film after Lee's death were noted by reviewers, most of whom saw them as an improvement. Howe said that it had been transformed into something compelling. Berardinelli, although terming it a genre film, said that it had become more mainstream because of the changes.

The film was widely compared to other films, particularly Tim Burton's Batman movies and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Critics described The Crow as a darker film than the others; Ebert called it a grungier and more forbidding story than those of Batman and Blade Runner, and Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote that "it’s set in a generic inner city so hellish it makes Gotham City look like the Emerald City".

While the plot and characterization were found to be lacking,  these faults were considered to be overcome by the action and visual style. The cinematography by Dariusz Wolski and the production design by Alex McDowell were also praised. The cityscape designed by McDowell and the production team was described by McCarthy as rendered imaginatively. The film's comic book origins were noted, and Ebert called it the best version of a comic book universe he had seen. McCarthy agreed, calling it "one of the most effective live-actioners ever derived from a comic strip". Critics felt that the soundtrack complemented this visual style, calling it blistering, edgy and boisterous. Graeme Revell was praised for his "moody" score; Howe said that it "drapes the story in a postmodern pall."

Negative reviews of the film were generally similar in theme to the positive ones but said that the interesting and "OK" special effects did not make up for the "superficial" plot, "badly-written" screenplay and "one-dimensional" characters.

The Crow is mentioned in Empire's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time; it ranked at number 468. It has since become a cult film.

Year-end lists

 * 7th – Sandi Davis, The Oklahoman
 * Top 10 (listed alphabetically, not ranked) – Matt Zoller Seitz, Dallas Observer
 * Top 10 (listed alphabetically, not ranked) – Mike Mayo, The Roanoke Times
 * Top 10 (not ranked) – Betsy Pickle, Knoxville News-Sentinel
 * Top 12 worst (Alphabetically ordered, not ranked) – David Elliott, The San Diego Union-Tribune
 * Top 3 "Best in-your-face exploitation" (not ranked) – Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News

Soundtracks
The original soundtrack album for The Crow features songs from the film, and was a chart-topping album. It included work by The Cure (their song, "Burn", became the film's main theme), The Jesus and Mary Chain, Rage Against the Machine and Helmet, among many others. In Peter Hook's memoir Substance: Inside New Order, Hook relates that New Order were approached to provide the soundtrack for the film, with a cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart", their hit as Joy Division, citing parallels between Eric's resurrection and New Order's formation after the suicide of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. However, New Order frontman Bernard Sumner declined, stating that they were too busy with their album Republic to commit to another project. James O'Barr, creator of the original comic book series, was a big fan of Joy Division and had named the characters Sergeant Albrecht and Captain Hook after bandmates Sumner (who was also known as Bernard Albrecht early in his career) and Hook.

Several groups contributed covers. Nine Inch Nails rendered Joy Division's "Dead Souls", Rollins Band covered Suicide's "Ghost Rider" and Pantera performed Poison Idea's "The Badge".

The bands Medicine and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult make cameo appearances in the film on stage in the nightclub below Top Dollar's headquarters.

The score consists of original, mostly orchestral music, with some electronic and guitar elements, written for the film by Graeme Revell.

Sequels
In 1996, a sequel was released, called The Crow: City of Angels. In this film, Vincent Pérez plays Ashe Corven, who, along with his son Danny, is killed by criminals. Ashe is resurrected as a new Crow. The character of Sarah Mohr (now played by Mia Kirshner) reappears in this film and assists Ashe. The film also features Iggy Pop, who, according to the booklet insert for the film's soundtrack, was the producer's first choice for Funboy in the first Crow movie, but he was unable to commit due to his recording schedule. In addition, it also featured the final appearance of Thuy Trang. The band Deftones can be seen playing live in a festival scene and they contributed the song "Teething" to the soundtrack. The film received mostly negative reviews.

The Crow: Stairway to Heaven was a 1998 Canadian television series created by Bryce Zabel and starring Mark Dacascos in the lead role as Eric Draven.

The third film, The Crow: Salvation, was released in 2000. Directed by Bharat Nalluri, it stars Eric Mabius, Kirsten Dunst, Fred Ward, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe and William Atherton. It is loosely based on Poppy Z. Brite's novel The Lazarus Heart. After its distributor cancelled the intended theatrical release due to The Crow: City of Angels' negative critical reception, The Crow: Salvation was released directly to video with mixed reviews.

The fourth film, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, was released in 2005. Directed by Lance Mungia, it stars Edward Furlong, David Boreanaz, Tara Reid, Tito Ortiz, Dennis Hopper, Emmanuelle Chriqui and Danny Trejo. It was inspired by Norman Partridge's novel of the same title. It had a one-week theatrical première on June 3, 2005, at AMC Pacific Place Theatre in Seattle, Washington, before being released to video on July 19, 2005. Like the other sequels, it had a poor critical reception.

The Crow: 2037 was a planned sequel written and scheduled to be directed by Rob Zombie in the late 1990s; however, it was never made.

Remake
On April 1, 2022, a new attempt at a remake was announced by The Hollywood Reporter, with Bill Skarsgård set to star as Draven, Rupert Sanders directing, and Edward R. Pressman and Malcolm Gray co-producing. Days later, the site also reported that FKA Twigs had been cast as Draven's fiancée. In July 2022, production on the remake was reportedly underway in Prague, Czech Republic. By August 26, 2022, Danny Huston was cast in an undisclosed role. On September 16, 2022, the film wrapped production. The film is set to be theatrically released on August 23, 2024 by Lionsgate Films, in the United States.

Home video
The Crow was first released on VHS and LaserDisc multiple times between 1994 and 1998 in addition to the widescreen DVD on February 3, 1998. The two-disc DVD was released on March 20, 2001, as part of the Miramax/Dimension Collector's Series. On October 18, 2011, The Crow was released on Blu-ray through Lionsgate Pictures who also re-released the DVD format on August 17, 2012. In Japan, the movie was remastered in 4K for a special edition in 2016, although the film's final resolution was capped at 1080p; a 4K edition of the film was released on May 7, 2024.

title: The Crow (1994 film)