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British Film Culture in the 1970s
The Boundaries of Pleasure
by Sue Harper and Justin Smith
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Book Presentation:
This volume draws a map of British film culture in the 1970s and provides a wide-ranging history of the period. It examines the cross-cultural relationship between British cinema and other media, including popular music and television. The analysis covers mainstream and experimental film cultures, identifying their production contexts and the economic, legislative and censorship constraints on British cinema throughout the decade.
The essays in Part I contextualise the study and illustrate the diversity of 1970s moving image culture. In Part II, Sue Harper and Justin Smith examine how gender relations and social space were addressed in film. They show how a shared visual manner and performance style characterises this fragmented cinema, and how irony and anxiety suffuse the whole film culture. This volume charts the shifting boundaries of permission in 1970s film culture and changes in audience taste.
This book is the culmination of an AHRC-funded project at the University of Portsmouth, For more information about 1970s British Cinema, Film and Video: Mainstream and Counter-Culture (2006-2009) please visit the project website at www.1970sproject.co.uk.
About the authors:
Sue Harper is Emeritus Professor of Film History at the University of Portsmouth. She is a cultural historian who has written widely on British cinema, and made numerous appearances on radio and television. She was the Principal Investigator on the 1970s AHRC-funded project, '1970s British Cinema, Film and Video: Mainstream and Counter-Culture' (2006-2009). Justin Smith is Reader in British Film Culture at the University of Portsmouth where he is also Post-Graduate Tutor in the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media. He is the author of Withnail and Us: Cult Films and Film Cults in British Cinema (I. B. Tauris, 2010) and, with Sue Harper, British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (Edinburgh University Press, 2011). He was a Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project 1970s British Cinema, Film and Video: Mainstream and Counter-Culture (2006-2009), www.1970sproject.co.uk; he is currently Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project 'Channel 4 Television and British Film Culture' (2010-2014), www.c4film.co.uk . A cultural historian with a special interest in British cinema, his research interests embrace production, reception and exhibition practices, film fandom, and issues of cultural identity and popular memory.
Press Reviews:
British Film Culture in the 1970s is an invigorating read, bold in its scope and imaginative in its organisation and methodology... This is a study of great richness and depth, intellectually risk-taking and provocative. It not only redefines our understanding of the 1970s, but also the task of the film historian, moving decisively away from the study of a body of films to a broader engagement with the complexity of film culture whose boundaries are constantly shifting and being redefined. For both those reasons, it should become essential reading.– Andrew Spicer, University of the West of England, Journal of British Cinema and Television
British Film Culture in the 1970s is an invigorating read, bold in its scope and imaginative in its organisation and methodology... This is a study of great richness and depth, intellectually risk-taking and provocative. It not only redefines our understanding of the 1970s, but also the task of the film historian, moving decisively away from the study of a body of films to a broader engagement with the complexity of film culture whose boundaries are constantly shifting and being redefined. For both those reasons, it should become essential reading, and one strongly hopes that a paperback edition is imminent.– Andrew Spicer, University of the West of England, Journal of British Cinema and Television
British Film Culture in the 1970s is certain to become the definitive study of British cinema's least understood decade. Sue Harper and Justin Smith must be commended for marshalling a wealth of material into a volume that represents not only scholarship of the highest order but is also a compelling narrative in its own right. What emerges is a fascinating account of the complex relationships between economic crises and aesthetic innovation as British film-makers responded to far-reaching changes in the industry and in the wider society and culture. This is not just one of the best recent books about British cinema - it is one of the best works of film history I have read.– James Chapman
Herein, Professor Harper and her droogs saunter out of the Karova milkbar, power up the Durango-95 and engage in a bit of the old ultra-analysis. The Portsmouth posse take a penetrating peek at the pictures in the period of punks, power-cuts and politicos, flinching neither at Robin Askwith's Y-fronts nor Malcolm McDowell's swastika jock-strap. Viddy well, O my brothers.– Steve Chibnall
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
> From the same authors:
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