Description
Over 39 chapters The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History offers a comprehensive and revisionist overview of British cinema as, on the one hand, a commercial entertainment industry and, on the other, a series of institutions centred on economics, funding and relations to government.
Whereas most histories of British cinema focus on directors, stars, genres and themes, this Companion explores the forces enabling and constraining the films’ production, distribution, exhibition, and reception contexts from the late nineteenth century to the present day.
The contributors provide a wealth of empirical and archive-based scholarship that draws on insider perspectives of key film institutions and illuminates aspects of British film culture that have been neglected or marginalized, such as the watch committee system, the Eady Levy, the rise of the multiplex and film festivals.
It also places emphasis on areas where scholarship has either been especially productive and influential, such as in early and silent cinema, or promoted new approaches, such as audience and memory studies.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I.Q. Hunter, Laraine Porter and Justin Smith
PART ONE - BRTISH SILENT CINEMA TO THE COMING OF SOUND: 1895 - 1930
1 The origins of British cinema, 1895 – 1918
Bryony Dixon
2 "Temporary American citizens": British cinema in the 1920s
Laraine Porter
3 "King of cameramen": Jack Cox and British cinematography in the silent era
Kelly Robinson
4 Designing the silent British film
Laurie N. Ede
5 Stardom in silent cinema
Adrian Garvey
6 The view from the pit: British silent cinema and the coming of sound
Neil Brand
7 The talkies come to Britain: British silent cinema and the transition to sound, 1928 - 1930
Laraine Porter
8 The Tudor Cinema, Leicester: a local case study
Guy Barefoot
9 The rise of the Film Society movement
Richard MacDonald
PART TWO - The classic period: 1930 - 1980
10 Make-believe and realism in British film production: from the coming of sound to the abolition of the National Film Finance Corporation
Charles Drazin
11 Local film censorship: the watch committee system
Alex Rock
12 Producers and moguls in the British film industry, 1930-1980
Andrew Spicer
13 Émigrés in classic British cinema
Andrew Moor
14 "Out of the frying pan, into the fire": British documentary, 1945 - 1952
Steve Foxon
15 "Above and beyond everyday life": the rise and fall of Rank’s contract artists of the 1950s
Steve Chibnall
16 "A friend to every exhibitor": National Screen Service and the British trailer industry
Keith M. Johnston
17 The Eady Levy, "the envy of most other European nations": runaway productions and the British Film Fund in the Early 1960s
James Fenwick
18 The Children’s Film Foundation
Andrew Roberts
19 "As long as indifferent sexy films are box office they will abound!!": The Jacey cinema chain and independent distribution and exhibition in 1960s Britain
Adrian Smith
20 Cinema and the age of television, 1950-1970
Sian Barber
21 The BBFC and the apparatus of censorship
Lucy Brett
22 The British Film Institute: between culture and industry
Richard Paterson
23 Trades unions and the British film industry, 1930s–1980s
Iain Reid
24 The public film archives and the evolving challenge of screen heritage preservation in the UK
James Patterson
25 Good of its kind? British film journalism
Sheldon Hall
PART THREE - Contemporary British Cinema: 1980 to the present
26 Cult films in British cinema and film culture
Kate Egan
27 The Scala Cinema: a case study
Jane Giles
28 Underground filmmaking: British Super 8 in the 1980s
Jo Comino
29 The rise of the multiplex
Stuart Hanson
30 Rewind, playback: re-viewing the "video boom" in Britain
Johnny Walker
31 The rise and fall of practically everyone? The independent British film production sector from the 1980s to the present
James Leggott
32 From Film Four to the Film Council: film policy, subsidy and sponsorship, and the relationship between cinema and TV, 1980-2010
James Cateridge
33 The architects of BBC Films
Anne Woods
34 The UKFC and the Regional Screen Agencies
Jack Newsinger
35 Hollywood blockbusters and UK production today
James Russell
36 Distributing British cinema
Julia Knight
37 Memories of British cinema
Matthew Jones
38 From Lerwick to Leicester Square: UK film festivals and why they matter
Sarah Smyth
39 Crowdfunding independence: British cinema and digital production/distribution platforms
Bethan Jones and Bertha Chin
