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During the early 1980s, there was a high level of expectation attached to the provision of a fourth television service in the UK. Channel 4 was set up to be a publisher–broadcaster, commercially self-funding, but with a public service remit to cater for minority groups. For the churches, the new channel initially looked as if it might provide fresh impetus for religious broadcasting, believed by many to be moribund. The paper examines the circumstances surrounding Jesus: The Evidence, a highly controversial Easter documentary series commissioned by Channel 4 during its first year – not at all what the churches had hoped for. It is suggested that the public furore sparked by the series arose from an escalating sense of disentitlement related to a very particular earlier history. It charts the general shift away from the precedent established in the 1920s by the BBC’s first Director General, to the advent of Channel 4, by which time this earlier position had come to be viewed as less than impartial. The paper identifies the principal points of contestation at the heart of the controversy, and concludes that it was emblematic of a growing cultural dissonance between the religious and the broadcasting institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By the end of the 1950s, independent film producers in Britain were facing an increasingly difficult challenge in sustaining their businesses. They were dependent on the major distribution companies for finance, but the combines that had long dominated the British film industry – the Rank Organisation and the Associated British Picture Corporation – had drastically reduced their production commitments, preferring to concentre on less risky aspects of their operations, notably exhibition and other leisure activities. Independent producers were therefore forced to find new ways to operate and as the new decade began one notable example of this was the formation of new collaborative enterprises to provide greater integration between production and distribution. One of the first and most significant examples of this was Bryanston Films, established by Maxwell Setton and Michael Balcon in 1959 and involving an array of distinguished directors, producers and other industry figures. Over a period of five years, Bryanston was responsible for the production and distribution of some 33 films, released through their association with British Lion. This article examines the formation, subsequent development and eventual decline and failure of this significant experiment in collaborative independent production and distribution. Drawing on the Michael Balcon papers held at the British Film Institute and the files of the completion guarantee company, Film Finances, the article examines Bryanston’s financial successes and failures, shedding light on some of the key players and projects in the Bryanston story and providing insight into the wider operations – including collaboration with a number of other companies. It will also touch on the wider opportunities and challenges facing independent production and distribution in a rapidly changing British film market during the early part of the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 1960s are regarded as a period of substantial change and transformation in the British film industry. While cinema attendances continued their steady decline, film production not only remained relatively buoyant but, perhaps more astonishingly, British films garnered an unprecedented level of critical and commercial success. One of the lesser known episodes of the period was a short-lived and ill-fated collaboration between the National Film Finance Corporation (NFFC), a specialised film bank set up by the government in 1949 to rescue an ailing production sector, and the Rank Organisation, the largest commercial company in the British film industry to co-finance a slate of medium budget feature films. This joint initiative led to the production of six feature films released in 1966 and 1967. Unfortunately, this group of productions failed to generate sufficient critical or commercial interest and the initiative quickly folded, consigned to little more than brief valedictory mentions in the standard histories. Making extensive use of government papers held in the National Archives and the files of the completion guarantee company, Film Finances, this article considers the initiative in detail, demonstrating how it can provide valuable insights into some of the underlying tensions and challenges as well as the opportunities facing British film production at a key moment marked not only by commercial and critical success but also by considerable turbulence and uncertainty. Among the factors examined here are the complex and sometimes contradictory impact of increased American funding, the ongoing concerns about the monopolistic tendencies within the industry, and the debates with government and industry prompted by the gradual erosion of the NFFC’s ability to support and nurture independent British film-making during the decade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers Channel Four Television (Channel 4) as a historical object that combines two ‘faces’ or logics. The first face is the ‘public service’ tradition of broadcasting inaugurated by John Reith at the BBC. The second is the ‘private services’ or ‘cultural entrepreneur’ tradition, which embodies a more corporate and commercial ethos. It is suggested that Channel 4 under its first Chief Executive Jeremy Isaacs was a distinctive ‘blend’ of these two faces, both of which can be traced to the extended ‘Sixties generation’ that made Channel 4 happen. Under Issacs, Channel 4 was a setting in which these two faces were in broad balance, providing a mutually reinforcing ecology of ‘public interest’ entrepreneurialism, and the result reinvigorated both television and the wider media culture of the day. The paper suggests that this balance was inherently unstable, and that the history of Channel 4 has seen the growing dominance of the private services face and a corresponding marginalisation of the public service tradition. In conclusion, some reasons are posed for this shift and its impact over the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented which discusses the history of the British film production company the Associated Sound Film Industries (ASFI) from 1929 through 1936. The ASFI's creation of the musical romance film "City of Song," directed by Carmine Gallone and starring Jan Kiepura, is discussed. The ASFI's finances, including as reported by the British trade paper the "Bioscope," are also discussed. An overview of the ASFI's relationship with the film production company Tobis is provided.

Based on the book by A.J. Cronin, The Citadel, directed by the American King Vidor, was one of the first films in British cinema to explore seriously the role of the medical profession. The semi-autobiographical account was influenced by the themes that dominated the author’s life - religion, poverty, politics and social concern. Seen through the eyes of Andrew Manson (Robert Donat), the film alerts audiences to the political failings of contemporary medical care in Britain, challenged deep seated traditions held by the establishment, and appealed for innovation and a willingness to embrace new inventions and treatments in medicine. The film is renowned for getting past the British Board of Film Censors rigorous standards to be granted an ‘A’ certificate and also provided a vivid portrayal of the wide social and class divisions of the country, contrasting the life of the poor mining communities of South Wales with the opulence of the rich and privileged society in London, and was an important landmark in the depiction of social realism in British cinema. The place of the medical ‘Establishment’ both in its protection of what might now be considered quasi-fraudulent medical practice and its opposition to new therapies (‘quackery’) explored in the book is thrown into stark relief by the film and this is explored further, in this paper, in the light of modern practice. The production of the film and the responses to it are explored both in its filmic context and in its wider impact on late 1930’s Britain resulting in its pivotal position in the story of the founding of the National Health Service in 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information about several topics discussed at the 24th meeting of the International Association for Media and History, which took place at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark from July 6-10, 2011 is presented. Speakers featured at the conference included film historian Thomas Christensen, war museum employee Suzanne Bardgett, and historian David Ellwood and lectures and discussions focused on the topic of film and history in Great Britain during World War II.

The responses in audience letters and in the press to the BBC's 1954 television adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four relate it to horror comics and ideas of sadism. This thread can be followed to connect this response to wider concerns with horror comics not just in the United Kingdom but across Europe in the post-World War II period. These concerns related to the fears of American soft power in the post-war world, and the potential effects that soft power would have on national identities. Comics in general, and horror comics in particular, were a useful focus for expressing these fears because of their American origins and because they were considered as products for children, and so as particularly important in forming the future of the culture. The Nineteen Eighty-Four adaptation connected to these fears, and so to the idea of 'horror comics', through its depiction of a depleted United Kingdom serving as a staging post for the forces of a larger power, an image of what some feared was the UK's real post-war status in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how different forms of writing mediate the past. In doing so, I focus on two ostensibly distinct types of authorship: the light that writing projected on-screen, and the life-writings found in letters and diaries. Between 1914 and 1919 in Britain, cinema and personal testimonies intervened in historiography in apparent opposition to one another. It is easy for us now to assume that state-censored, propagandistic movies narrated the state’s version of the First World War, while secret, illegal accounts written by personnel on the Western Front line described actuality (while letter writing was permitted – subject to censorship – all serving personnel were banned from keeping diaries). However, a study of British ambulance trains reveals that films and life-writings have a shared vocabulary, which complicates the two media’s connections to history and to one another. I argue that by interrogating the motifs congruent on the screen and the page, and by reading films and testimonies in tandem, we can rediscover effaced narratives about wartime conditions and marginalised peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay explores the process through which the moving image became part of the promotion of Britain as a new nuclear nation in the mid-1950s. Made by, for, or with the authority of the newly created United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, a number of films were produced by different companies, all presenting the UKAEA as a modern, national asset, justifying its development of both military and civil uses of atomic energy together. There was no sophisticated studio for this purpose to match Lookout Mountain and the role it played in the US military development of atomic weapons. Instead the Central Office of Information Films Division and the documentary production companies it employed used the skills and resources still in existence after the heyday of the British documentary movement to document and represent a new important reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to a special issue of the journal dedicated to the topic of film and history during World War II in Great Britain is presented.

The article examines ways in which motion picture audiences, and the cinema-going experience as a whole, in Great Britain were impacted by the country's involvement in World War II. Particular focus is paid to British government regulations which banned the consumption of ice cream and rationed the production of sweets, such as chocolates and confectionery foods, as part of austerity measures to fund the war effort. It chronicles the history of the consumption of food as part of the cinema-going experience in both pre-war and wartime Great Britain, examines how confectionery companies were influenced by the Ministry of Food's (MoF) regulations, and explains how watching films served as an escape for citizens during wartime.

This article examines the role of one of the first arthouse cinemas in London, the Everyman in Hampstead. A detailed local study, it also explores the wider context of cinema in Britain in the 1930s when an art film culture was being formed and developed. It argues that the Everyman, albeit one small cinema, was a significant agent in the creation of this new culture. It argues that the particularities of place contributed to the distinctive identity of the cinema. Hampstead in the 1930s, with the influx of modernist and avant-garde artists, many of them exiles from Fascist Europe, became the centre of a vibrant artistic community. And the Everyman, with its programme of independent and foreign language films, along with art exhibitions, was an integral part of this community. A detailed analysis of the enterprising programming strategies of the Everyman will explore differences and similarities with other art cinemas and will examine how its repertory programming, which included revivals and seasons from a broad range of world cinema, contributed to its success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluates the future of foreign news in Great Britain. Reduction in the resources devoted to the gathering and discussion of foreign news; Decline in the proportion of foreign news in American newspapers; Factors which contributed to the decline in the interest in foreign news.

Outlines the understanding of how and by whom the collection of World War I British official films known as the IWM Series was created, how they have come to survive, and the scope of the said collection. Development of film war propaganda during the First World War; Role of the Imperial War Museum in preserving the films; Overview of the scope of the IWM Series.

Published work which addresses video's formative years in Britain typically frames children in one of two ways: either as victims of 'video nasties', or as scapegoats used by social guardians and policy-makers to further a profoundly moralistic, censorious, agenda. The centrality of youngsters to this historical moment cannot be denied, but there is much more to be learned about their relationship with video entertainment during the early 1980s. It would be unreasonable to suggest - as some have - that, because the video industry lacked governmental regulation between the years 1978 and 1984, video distributors were so 'brash and out for profit' that they disregarded children's welfare. On the contrary, and as this article will reveal, many distributors traded in an array of videos intended specifically for a child audience, ranging from age-appropriate feature films to cartoons to nonfiction education videos, while others dealt exclusively in children's entertainment. Indeed, far from simply being irresponsible peddlers of horror and pornography, some companies went to great lengths to appeal directly to youngsters - including companies that would be subsequently prosecuted for trading in 'obscene publications'. Situating the video boom in its historical context, this article examines how distributors marketed 'kidvids' in the trade and consumer press, and how they sought to promote children's product that was not only designed to entertain, but also to educate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The BBC in the 1950s was a conservative and cautious institution. British theatre was at the same time largely commercial and offered a glamourous distraction from wider social and political realities. During the decade, however, new avant-garde approaches to drama emerged, both on the stage and on radio. The avant-garde was particularly vibrant in Paris, where Samuel Beckett was beginning to challenge theatrical orthodoxies. Initially, managers and producers in BBC radio rejected a radio version of Beckett's, Waiting for Godot and other experimental work was viewed with distaste but eventually Beckett was accepted and commissioned to write All That Fall (1957), a masterpiece of radio drama. Other Beckett broadcasts followed, including more writing for radio, extracts from his novels and radio versions of his stage plays as well as plays by the experimental radio dramatist, Giles Cooper. This article examines the different change agents which enabled an initially reluctant BBC to convert enthusiastically to the avant-garde. A networked group of younger producers, men and women, played a vital role in the acceptance of Beckett as did the striking pragmatism of senior radio managers. A willingness to accept the transnational cultural flow from Paris to London was also an important factor. The attempt to reinvent radio drama using 'radiophonic' sound effects (pioneered in Paris) was another factor for change and this was encouraged by growing competition from television drama on the BBC and ITV. The acceptance and eventual championing of avant-garde drama in the late 1950s reveal how the BBC's commitment to public service broadcasting facilitated a flowering of experimental and avant-garde drama during radio drama's golden age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the 1970s television career of the writer Tom Hadaway, drawing upon archival holdings, public and personal, to analyse and contextualise his dramas made for the BBC. Hadaway, who spent much of his professional life working in the fishing industry, has some reputation in his native north-east of England for his stage and television plays, mostly dealing with the people, customs and history of the coastal area of North Shields. Beyond his birthplace, however, Hadaway remains an obscure figure. Through an analysis of his work within the climate of its production, this article argues for the writer's unique contribution to British television culture; it also offers a case study for the historical opportunities and limitations for the 'regional' voice in British broadcasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The television series Soldier, Soldier of the 1990s remains the longest running, most successful British small-screen drama with which the British Army has ever been involved. Why, though, would the Ministry of Defence lend both material and human support over the course of seven years to the realization of stories over which it had no direct control, and that sometimes dealt with controversial issues ranging from sexism and racism to post-traumatic stress disorder and homosexuality? A likely answer lies in the way in which the army came to exert indirect influence over episodes and the series as a whole through the on-set presence of a succession of military advisors combined with common interests on the part of producers and the army and a tacit willingness to compromise when necessazry. Why was the resulting series so popular and wide-ranging in its appeal to television viewers? Through an examination of publicity material, press reviews and audience data, it can be ascertained that the original concept behind Soldier, Soldier - a human drama about the lives of individual serving men and the women with whom they are involved - was one that had broad cross-sectional appeal. This in turn provided the army with a chance to display itself, in a fictional context but on balance in a positive light, not only to large numbers of potential recruits but also to their families and the public at large without the propaganda stigma attached to more direct forms of advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the neglect in academic studies of film culture of the publicist’s role, particularly in British film production and distribution. Taking the last decade of the British studio system (the 1950s) and the leading British studio (Rank) as its timeframe and focus, the article explores the role of the publicist in the film industry and film culture. After reviewing contemporary debates about publicity strategies and the importance of star creation, the article identifies leading practitioners and then discusses their relationship to the newspaper press before offering a job description for the film publicist and the significance of women in the profession. The second section considers the interactions between publicists, contract artists and studio managers, noting the importance of personal appearances by stars and their frequent frustrations with the way they were treated and used by the Rank Organisation. The third section deals with Rank’s mid-decade shift towards markets in continental Europe as British exhibition revenues declined, and the impact this had on promotional practices, particularly with the growing importance of overseas film festivals. The fourth section focuses on the production of pictorial publicity, considering in some detail the roles played by the studio photographer, Cornel Lucas, and the Italian poster artists who were used to give a contemporary and continental gloss to Rank’s products. The final section briefly describes and accounts for the decline of Rank as a film production company and the consequence of this for its promotional activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents an examination of material from archives, much of it little known and little researched, on the Italian film industry. The importance of archive sources in pinpointing the processes that bring a film to the screen continues to inform film research. The main documentation explored is that of the Film Finances Archive, only recently made available to researchers. This is considered in tandem with data from the Italian State Archive, and a range of other critical and narrative sources. Of these, particularly significant is the correspondence and autobiography of Prince Alessandro Tasca, a little-known figure, who was the Film Finances representative in Italy. Italian filmmaking from 1950 to 1960 is the main focus because it is given extensive coverage in the Film Finances Archive, when the company was involved in a number of Anglo-Italian co-productions. The field of Anglo-Italian co-productions has been described as an ‘undiscovered world’. It is thus contended that, through exploration of this newly available archive material and other relevant sources, the study offers a fresh perspective on the context of postwar Italian filmmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on the topic of forgotten television drama in Great Britain.

Cinema advertising films have for many decades constituted an important element of British cinema programmes, yet they remain relatively under-researched. This article examines the production, distribution and reception of one such film, a 90 second mini-epic called ‘Lost Island’, which was made in 1965 to promote Sea Witch hair dyes. As well as outlining the technological and experiential aspects of the cinema and cinema-going that continued to make film an attractive medium for advertisers even after the advent of mass television ownership, the article explores the success of the ‘Lost Island’ film and its eventual transmission on commercial television in the UK. As such, an investigation of ‘Lost Island’ allows for an assessment of the appeal of the cinema in the mid-1960s, and also the appeal of the cinema relative to other advertising media in the same period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented to the issue of the journal that discusses topics such as the role of motion pictures in the First World War, the film "The Battle of the Somme," and maintaining morale on the home front in Great Britain.

The Great War broke out at the moment that the film industry at all levels, production, distribution and exhibition was becoming established. Here the attention is on the local cinema cultures of three spaces: Louvain in Belgium, Southampton in England, and Stevens Point, Wisconsin, in the United States. The areas share marked differences: Louvain suffered considerably, including direct damage to its buildings, reprisal executions of its citizens and German occupation for the four years of the war; Southampton witnessed the parade of war through its role as the main embarkation point for British troops, as well as suffering the loss in unprecedented number of casualties which the British people endured; and Stevens Point was different again in that the war directly touched the local community, with its considerable German and Polish immigrant population, as the politics of the nation shifted from isolation to engagement. These were all factors in the exhibition strategies of local cinema exhibitors who negotiated new audiences. The article draws out similarities and differences in these areas to argue that the war’s impact on particular local cultures was significant in the establishment of cinema’s social function within each community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article will focus on the wartime cinema facilities provided by the philanthropic association the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the YMCA turned its attention to supporting troops fighting for Britain and her Empire. YMCA huts were built to provide soldiers with food and a place to rest on the frontline, or at home in military camps and railway stations. Alongside the arrangements for entertainments made by the Army at Divisional level, the YMCA had a central role in providing morale-boosting entertainment and moral-strengthening education to British soldiers. Films became a central mode of entertainment for British servicemen serving on the Western Front and the Mediterranean. Cinema shows were the most popular part of the concert party programme, with many cinema halls also acting as theatres. The YMCA had 77 cinema plants, the majority of which were portable units providing free showings to men in forward positions. There were 20 specially constructed cinema theatres in principal Base Camps, each with a capacity of up to 1500 men, and towards the end of the war, the organisation estimated that it had shown films to 35,000 men for every night of the conflict. This article will show how valuable the medium of film became to the British Army in terms of morale and discipline. An effective ‘counter-attraction’ to less wholesome forms of recreation, the cinema was an essential element of wartime life for British troops serving in the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the representation of the Merchant Navy on BBC radio in Britain during the Second World War. It discusses how this essential, but dangerous, wartime role was presented to the British public by arguably the most prevalent wartime cultural medium. It uses extensive research in the BBC’s Written Archive Centre, using both radio broadcasts and listener research, to understand how the role of the Merchant Navy was portrayed and understood during the war. This article argues that, unlike other civilian occupations, men of the Merchant Navy were presented as brave and courageous under enemy fire and were consequently given access to much of the prestige generally reserved for the armed forces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

William Butler Yeats is recognised as a pioneer in the history of radio broadcasting in the United Kingdom; the talks and poetry readings he conceived for the British Broadcasting Corporation between 1931 and 1938 display his genuine interest in writing for, and speaking to the wireless, and the published scripts of his broadcasts have received sustained critical attention in their own right. However, if Yeats’s collaboration with the BBC during the 1930s has been carefully explored, the periods that precede and follow the creation of his BBC broadcasts have remained shrouded in mystery. In this article, I provide a new chronology of radiophonic adaptations and broadcasts of Yeats’s writings that complements extant knowledge of this facet of broadcasting history, and I argue that Yeats’s personal involvement with radio should be envisaged in a wider context. Indeed, the artistic leeway that Yeats was granted when conceiving his BBC programmes is not merely related to his status as Nobel Prize winner, but is inscribed in an evanescent and previously undocumented history of broadcasting, which saw the rise of Yeats’s poetry and plays to prominence on the British and Irish airwaves from the early days of broadcasting in the 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uncovers the little-known history of Southern Television’s boat Southerner, acquired by the company and adapted into a moving camera and outside broadcast unit in the 1960s. In particular, this research explores the many functions the boat served in the production of the teen spy serial Freewheelers. Southerner represents both a singular case study and an example of how outside broadcast and location filming technologies were used with increasing frequency in the production of television drama. The trend from studio-based to location-based production has been discussed at length, though not much attention has been given to the importance of location shooting to regional representation. In the context of early ITV, regionality was part of the remit of the companies who served the regions for the network. Through an analysis of production documents, publicity and critical reception, this article argues that Southerner helped to forge the regional identity of Southern Television. Moreover,Freewheelers solidified the company’s brand by collating images of the region—and the seafaring activities of its inhabitants—as well as becoming a visible part of Southern’s infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Joan Kemp-Welch (1906–1999), one of the first female television directors, started out as an actor on both the stage and film before becoming a theatre director and finally moving to television in 1955. She directed a variety of entertainment programmes for Associated-Rediffusion before marrying her evident skills as a television director with her rich experience of theatre work, in a number of important television plays, some from the stage and others written for the new medium. This article will examine how Kemp-Welch’s experience of theatre practice may have inscribed itself on her television productions of stage plays, focusing on the practical and aesthetic use she made of space in extant studio productions of plays set in very different locales and time periods, including Sophocles’Electra(1962),Three Sisters(1963),A Midsummer Night’s Dream(1964) andRomeo and Juliet(1976). This case study of an accomplished director of television plays will, therefore, attempt to understand the social, cultural and specifically theatrical meanings of the use of space in these productions to represent and suggest a variety of domestic, rural, urban and national places on the British small screen. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The BBC television drama anthologyThe Wednesday Play, broadcast from 1964 to 1970 on the BBC1 channel, was high-profile and often controversial in its time and has since been central to accounts of British television’s ‘golden age.’ This article demonstrates that production technologies and methods were more diverse at that time than is now acknowledged, and thatThe Wednesday Playdramas drew both approving but also very critical responses from contemporary viewers and professional reviewers. It analyses the ways that the physical spaces of production for different dramas in the series, and the different technologies of shooting and recording that were adopted in these production spaces, are associated with but do not determine aesthetic style. The adoption of single-camera location filming rather than the established production method of multi-camera studio videotaping in some of the dramas in the series has been important toThe Wednesday Play’s significance, but each production method was used in different ways. The dramas drew their dramatic forms and aesthetic emphases from both theatre and cinema, as well as connecting with debates about the nature of drama for television. Institutional and regulatory frameworks such as control over staff working away from base, budgetary considerations and union agreements also impacted on decisions about how programmes were made. The article makes use of records from the BBC Written Archives Centre, as well as published scholarship. By placingThe Wednesday Playin a range of overlapping historical contexts, its identity can be understood as transitional, differentiated and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article documents the production histories of five British feature films produced by Harry Saltzman—The Iron Petticoat, The Entertainer, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Dr No and The Ipcress File—as well as the US–Italian television seriesCaptain Gallant of the Foreign Legion,based on the records of Film Finances Ltd. It explores Saltzman’s working practices as a producer and sheds light on the political economy of the British film industry in the late 1950s and 1960s. It examines Saltzman’s involvement in the British new wave through his partnership with Tony Richardson and John Osborne in Woodfall Films as well as his role in the origins of the James Bond film series. It also demonstrates the crucial, though hitherto unknown, role played by Film Finances in the production of these films. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents interviews with several people associated with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project "Channel 4 Television and British Film Culture," including the founder of Birmingham, England's Film and Video Workshop Roger Shannon, the former Senior Commissioning Editor at Channel 4's Independent Film and Video Department (IFVD) Alan Fountain, and the former Deputy Commissioning Editor at Channel 4's IFVD Rod Stoneman.

S4C, launched one day prior to Channel 4 on 1 November 1982, depended heavily in its formative years on its sister channel for content to fill the schedules around its 22 hours a week of original Welsh content broadcast at peak hours. Freed from any constraints by the ‘once around the transmitters’ agreement and a strong relationship between its two Chief Executives, the Welsh channel was given free rein to select and schedule Channel 4’s programmes as it wished and broadcast them free of charge. With no room for all of the Channel 4 programmes within the S4C schedules, some programmes would have to be omitted and the complexities of the relationship would be exposed by the difference in style between the programmes produced in English and in Welsh. This article will explore the relationship between the two channels and the tensions and difficulties that arose by studying the way that the films purchased and produced by Channel 4 were broadcast on S4C as a case study. The article will also consider how the relationship between both channels influenced the commissioning of Welsh-language films by S4C. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the distribution and critical reception of films created by British independent filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in the U.S. during the late 1930s and 1940s, with focus given to their films "The Spy in Black," "49th Parallel," and "U-Boat 29." The author examines the impact of British film export policy on the American distribution of these films along with U.S. public interest in World War II-related motion pictures during this period. Also noted is the way in which these films were exported to the U.S. as a means to convince the country to end its isolationism and join the Allied effort in World War II.

The article discusses the British film industry, examining several films produced between 1929 and 1931 to explore how social class differences were portrayed through the voice of actors and actresses. The author notes how economic hardships and depression led to large social class differences in Great Britain during this period, discusses the views of essayist Siegfried Kracauer on the portrayal of women in films, and analyses reflections of World War I in motion pictures. Other topics include thriller, comedy, and crime films and the role of the British Board of Film Censors in removing overtly political content from films.

The article presents a historical overview of British government-run filmmaking in the colony of Hong Kong during the 1930s and 1940s. Particular focus is given to the struggle between the Colonial Office (CO) of the British Colonial Film Unit (CFU) and the documentary film movement in Great Britain known as Griersonian tradition, after the filmmaker John Grierson. Additional topics include World War II propaganda films produced by the CFU and the British Ministry of Information (MoI) to promote British aims in its colonies during the conflict and differences in film production in large and small British colonies.

The article discusses the history of the oral history film archive known as the BECTU History Project (BHP) from 1986 to 2010. Particular focus is given to the role that the BHP has played in British film-making. The relationship between BHP's archives and other oral history archives, including the American Film Institute, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Archive of American Television, is discussed. The relationship between labor unions and the BHP is presented.

Recent debates about the role of 3-D within cinema (and other media) have contained the traces of a largely anti-stereoscopic agenda that can be traced back to critical responses to 3-D in the 1950s. This article considers how British film reviews from the 1950s and 1980s established potent terms of discussion around the 3-D technology, its potential aesthetic development, and the role of stereoscopy within cinema. Exploring the parameters that the original reviewers set in place concerning the 3-D aesthetic, notably claims around realism, novelty, and gimmickry, the article argues that the language and terms of 1950s British film reviewers have worked to set an agenda that resonates through both the 1980s 3-D revival and modern day digital 3-D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are accustomed to the complaint that western media depict the developing world in a stereotyped and inadequate manner. However this article, based on documents in the BBC Written Archives Centre, demonstrates that the way India was reported in the period 1970–1987 provides an exception to this characterisation. The material reveals that the there was surprisingly, an intense care and attention shown by broadcasters and managers to the coverage of India. The factors which underlay this include the growing confidence of the Indian diaspora population, a continuing interest by individual broadcasters in Indian affairs and the influence of an exceptional correspondent in Delhi throughout this period. Moreover the Indian government and indeed many Indian individuals maintained a critical interest, bordering sometimes on an obsession, in the portrayal of Indian affairs by the BBC. The networks between India and its UK diaspora enabled pressure to be exerted on the BBC which, as the records demonstrate, broadcasters took very seriously. This ability of Indians to ‘access’ their coverage (and then complain about it) is an early precursor to the pattern of foreign reporting which prevails today in an era of globally available media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1945, the established British imperial communications system, based on the Cable and Wireless network, was re-structured. The imperial partners agreed to break up the hitherto integrated system and re-establish it as an interconnecting network of networks based on separate, nationalised, entities. Co-ordination began to shift from a consensual system to one based on prices and the hitherto largely self-contained system began to interconnect with other global telecommunication networks, notably those of the USA. John, Lord Reith played an important role in these transformations and his January 1945 “Mission” to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia epitomises both the mutuality and the London dominance that characterised the imperial system and which were to fall away following the Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference held in London in mid 1945. Reith’s Mission exemplified the swan song of a distinctive manner of imperial governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The short documentary Air Outpost is one of three films commissioned from Strand Films by Imperial Airways in 1936-37 and produced by Paul Rotha. It focused on one overnight stop on the airline’s India service: the airfield and town of Sharjah in the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates). British policy in the Gulf carefully controlled access to the Trucial States by Westerners, so the release of a documentary about this region was unprecedented. Rotha’s published and unpublished writings are used to argue that he selected Sharjah for its exotic appeal as a result of his own visit there in 1932 while shooting Contact, also for Imperial Airways. For a film commissioned by an airline for marketing purposes, Air Outpost shows almost nothing of the passenger experience. Rather than this having been Rotha’s deliberate omission, it is argued that it resulted from practical difficulties encountered during filming. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the British Film Weeks of 1924. Drawing on trade, national and local press reports, I explore how these high-profile events impacted on the British film industry’s operations at this time and on broader discussions of British national cinema raging in the public sphere. While most academic literature dismisses the ‘Weeks’ as the failed projects of an ailing industry, I argue that they served as a testing ground for a number of industrial and political initiatives that would influence the ways in which British cinema was debated and promoted later in the 1920s and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and examines his habit of viewing films as a form of relaxation during his tenure in office, focusing on the time period of 1935 to 1945. The article cites documents from Churchill's secretary John Colville and British businessman Sidney Bernstein to chronicle the films he viewed, typically on weekends, at both the country house of Member of Parliament Ronald Tree and Chequers, the country estate of Churchill. It overviews ways in which Churchill's advisers were able to obtain films from companies such as General Film Distributors, describes his viewing of newsreels and short films related to the war, and comments on his pleasure in viewing films including "The Young Mr. Pitt," "Comrade X," and "Lady Hamilton."

The article presents a historical overview of the rise in popularity of films that focused on spivs, or black market criminals, in Great Britain during World War II and examines how this theme in filmmaking was influenced by American crime and gangster films. It explores ways in which black market crimes were covered by the British press and in British literature during wartime, describes how the language, behavior, and dress of young British men showed evidence of the influence of gangster films on their lives, and discusses the black market for food in Sheffield, England amidst wartime rationing. Other topics include a description of the image of the spiv in motion pictures, the clothing entrepreneur Cecil Gee, and the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC).

The article discusses the role of motion pictures in popular culture in Great Britain during World War II, focusing on the mindset of motion picture audiences and their viewing preferences. It presents a chronological history of "Picturegoer," a fan magazine regarding the film industry, and examines how the war impacted both the content and production of the weekly publication. It also analyzes how advertisements in the magazine were marketed toward women readers by emphasizing glamour and romance as well as reminding women to save money for the war effort. Other topics include statistics regarding the readership of "Picturegoer," the themes of films in British film during World War II, and several images of film stars including Betty Hutton, Humphrey Bogart, and Ann Sheridan.

The article discusses the British libel lawsuit Robertson v. Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer (MGM). It notes that the case arose when British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) film critic E. Arnot Robertson sued MGM over their letter to BBC complaining about Robertson's review of the film "The Green Years." The author explores the relationship between the motion picture trade and film criticism, commenting on the film trade periodical "Kinematograph Weekly." The BBC's employment practices for film critics are also considered.

The article discusses film criticism in Great Britain from 1945 to 1965, focusing on aspects of gender. Several British women film critics are examined, including Dilys Powell and Catherine de la Roche. The author comments on the professional status and working conditions of film critics, particularly exploring freelance work and flexible hours. The article also examines the public reception to women's criticism, reflecting on a libel law suit filed by film critic E. Arnot Robertson against MGM studios in the 1940s.

The article discusses the latter part of the career of British journalist Sir Robert Donald (1860-1933), during which he headed the Empire Press Union and worked to promote the use of wireless telegraphy, an early form of radio communication. Donald's influence on imperial wireless policy and the news system in Great Britain and its dominions is discussed, with reference to the role of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, the British government's Wireless Telegraphy Commission, and other players.

The article discusses competition between British and U.S. companies in the advertising market in Australia in the 1920s. The approaches to the Australian market by advertising agencies in the U.S. and Great Britain are discussed, including the dual perception of Australia as both a foreign and domestic market by British firms, and as a foreign market in the U.S. Advertising firms discussed include J. Walter Thompson and Gotham in the U.S., Gordon & Gotch and Samson Clark in Great Britain, and others. Also discussed are trends in print media and advertising.