An Autobiography of British Cinema

An Autobiography of British Cinema
Author: Brian McFarlane
Publisher: Methuen Publishing
Total Pages: 678
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

An Autobiography of British Cinema tell the story of British film by those who made it.

Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema

Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema
Author: Ian Christie
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2019-12-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 022661011X

The early years of film were dominated by competition between inventors in America and France, especially Thomas Edison and the Lumière brothers . But while these have generally been considered the foremost pioneers of film, they were not the only crucial figures in its inception. Telling the story of the white-hot years of filmmaking in the 1890s, Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema seeks to restore Robert Paul, Britain’s most important early innovator in film, to his rightful place. From improving upon Edison’s Kinetoscope to cocreating the first movie camera in Britain to building England’s first film studio and launching the country’s motion-picture industry, Paul played a key part in the history of cinema worldwide. It’s not only Paul’s story, however, that historian Ian Christie tells here. Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema also details the race among inventors to develop lucrative technologies and the jumbled culture of patent-snatching, showmanship, and music halls that prevailed in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Both an in-depth biography and a magnificent look at early cinema and fin-de-siècle Britain, Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema is a first-rate cultural history of a fascinating era of global invention, and the revelation of one of its undervalued contributors.

The Unknown 1930s

The Unknown 1930s
Author: Jeffrey Richards
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1998-12-31
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

British film historians reassess the films, stars, genres, and directors omitted from conventional accounts of the decade and evaluate its forgotten and recently rediscovered films. They consider audiences, producer Julius Hagen and his independent Twickenham Film Studios, how MGM deal with the Films Acts, the shocker and musical genres, class and gender issues, national identity, and other dimensions. Distributed by St. Martin's Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Hitchcock's British Films

Hitchcock's British Films
Author: Maurice Yacowar
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2010
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780814334942

In this traditional auteurist examination of Hitchcock's early work, author Maurice Yacowar considers Hitchcock's British films in chronological order, reading the composition of individual shots and scenes in each, and paying special attention to the films' verbal effects.

The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History

The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History
Author: I.Q. Hunter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2017-01-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315392178

This book 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.

Movie Workers

Movie Workers
Author: Melanie Bell
Publisher: Women & Film History International
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021
Genre: Motion picture industry
ISBN: 9780252085864

Rolling the credits on six decades of women in film After the advent of sound, women in the British film industry formed an essential corps of below-the-line workers, laboring in positions from animation artist to negative cutter to costume designer. Melanie Bell maps the work of these women decade-by-decade, examining their far-ranging economic and creative contributions against the backdrop of the discrimination that constrained their careers. Her use of oral histories and trade union records presents a vivid counter-narrative to film history, one that focuses not only on women in a male-dominated business, but on the innumerable types of physical and emotional labor required to make a motion picture. Bell's feminist analysis looks at women's jobs in film at important historical junctures while situating the work in the context of changing expectations around women and gender roles. Illuminating and astute, Movie Workers is a first-of-its-kind examination of the unsung women whose invisible work brought British filmmaking to the screen.

A Life in Movies

A Life in Movies
Author: Michael Powell
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 723
Release: 2000
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780571204311

"Much, much more than the reminiscences of a film director. It's a rich, beautifully detailed history of a time, a place, and a world gone by--the British film industry from the 1920s through the late 1940s, in which every remembrance . . . is filtered through [Powell's] poetic genius . . . as absorbing as any novel".--Martin Scorsese. 30 photos.

Mainly about Lindsay Anderson

Mainly about Lindsay Anderson
Author: Gavin Lambert
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2000
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Lindsay Anderson was the most original British filmmaker and theatrical director of his generation. His films "If . . ., O Lucky Man!, and "Britannia Hospital created a Human Comedy of life in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century and were witty, daring, and often prophetic. "This Sporting Life and "O Lucky Man! made Richard Harris and Malcolm McDowell international stars; "The Whales of August provided Lillian Gish, Bette Davis, and Ann Sothern the opportunity to give extraordinary farewell performances. He also directed notable documentaries in several countries: in Britain, the Academy Award-winning "Thursday's Children, about a school for deaf-mute children; in Poland, "The Singing Lesson, a personal impression of a group of students at a drama school. In China, he recorded the 1985 concert tour by George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley of WHAM! As a theatre director he collaborated with playwright David Storey on a series of successes ("The Contractor, The Changing Room, In Celebration, Home), and he worked with such actors as John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Alan Bates, Albert Finney, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, Joan Plowright, and Rachel Roberts. Anderson was, as well, an outspoken and sometimes ferocious critic of British films--and of Britain itself. He was the author of the most important and acclaimed book on John Ford. And he was one of Gavin Lambert's closest friends for more than fifty years. Lambert's book begins with his and Anderson's days as movie-struck schoolboys, becoming fast friends, growing up in the shadow of World War II. He shows us their postwar creation of and collaboration on the influential magazine "Sequence--a magazine thatwas produced on love and a shoestring, and which shook up the British film world with its admiration for both Hollywood noir and MGM musicals (at the time unfashionable genres) and its celebration of such directors as Ford, Bunuel, Cocteau, Vigo, and Sturges. He describes how both men rebelled in opposite directions--Anderson remaining in England, Lambert leaving in 1958 for Los Angeles--and traces their unorthodox paths through the film industry. An illuminating, multifaceted portrait--of a friendship, of postwar moviemaking on both sides of the Atlantic, and, mainly, of the remarkable Lindsay Anderson.

British Cinema, Past and Present

British Cinema, Past and Present
Author: Justine Ashby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1135125082

British Cinema: Past and Present responds to the commercial and critical success of British film in the 1990s. Providing a historical perspective to the contemporary resurgence of British cinema, this unique anthology brings together leading international scholars to investigate the rich diversity of British film production, from the early sound period of the 1930s to the present day. The contributors address: * British Cinema Studies and the concept of national cinema * the distribution and reception of British films in the US and Europe * key genres, movements and cycles of British cinema in the 1940s, 50s and 60s * questions of authorship and agency, with case studies of individual studios, stars, producers and directors * trends in British cinema, from propaganda films of the Second World War to the New Wave and the 'Swinging London' films of the Sixties * the representation of marginalised communities in films such as Trainspotting and The Full Monty * the evolution of social realism from Saturday Night, Sunday Morning to Nil By Mouth * changing approaches to Northern Ireland and the Troubles in films like The Long Good Friday and Alan Clarke's Elephant * contemporary 'art' and 'quality' cinema, from heritage drama to the work of Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Terence Davies and Patrick Keiller.

The British Cinema Book

The British Cinema Book
Author: Robert Murphy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1838718656

The new edition of The British Cinema Book has been thoroughly revised and updated to provide a comprehensive introduction to the major periods, genres, studios, film-makers and debates in British cinema from the 1890s to the present. The book has five sections, addressing debates and controversies; industry, genre and representation; British cinema 1895-1939; British cinema from World War II to the 1970s, and contemporary British cinema. Within these sections, leading scholars and critics address a wide range of issues and topics, including British cinema as a 'national' cinema; its complex relationship with Hollywood; film censorship; key British genres such as horror, comedy and costume film; the work of directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Asquith, Alexander Mackendrick, Michael Powell, Lindsay Anderson, Ken Russell and Mike Leigh; studios such as Gainsborough, Ealing, Rank and Gaumont, and recent signs of hope for the British film industry, such as the rebirth of the low-budget British horror picture, and the emergence of a British Asian cinema. Discussions are illustrated with case studies of key films, many of which are new to this edition, including Piccadilly (1929) It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), The Ladykillers (1955), This Sporting Life (1963), The Devils (1971), Withnail and I (1986), Bend it Like Beckham (2002) and Control (2007), and with over 100 images from the BFI's collection. The Editor: Robert Murphy is Professor in Film Studies at De Montfort University and has written and edited a number of books on British cinema, including British Cinema and the Second World War (2000) and Directors in British and Irish Cinema (2006). The contributors: Ian Aitken, Charles Barr, Geoff Brown, William Brown, Stella Bruzzi, Jon Burrows, James Chapman, Steve Chibnall, Pamela Church Gibson, Ian Conrich, Richard Dacre, Raymond Durgnat, Allen Eyles, Christine Geraghty, Christine Gledhill, Kevin Gough-Yates, Sheldon Hall, Benjamin Halligan, Sue Harper, Erik Hedling, Andrew Hill, John Hill, Peter Hutchings, Nick James, Marcia Landy, Barbara Korte, Alan Lovell, Brian McFarlane, Martin McLoone, Andrew Moor, Robert Murphy, Lawrence Napper, Michael O'Pray, Jim Pines, Vincent Porter, Tim Pulleine, Jeffrey Richards, James C. Robertson, Tom Ryall, Justin Smith, Andrew Spicer, Claudia Sternberg, Sarah Street, Melanie Williams and Linda Wood.