Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism / Edition 2

by Lester Friedman

Overview

Fires Were Started is a provocative analysis of the responses of British film to the policies and political ideology of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and it represents an original and stimulating contribution to our knowledge of British cinema. This second edition includes revised and updated contributions from some of the leading scholars of British cinema, including Thomas Elsaesser, Peter Wollen and Manthia Diawara. The book discuss prominent filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Ken Russell, Nicolas Roeg and Stephen Frears, it also explores some lesser known but equally important territory such as the work of Black British filmmakers, the Leeds Animation Workshop and Channel 4's Film on Four. Films discussed include Distant Voices, Still Lives, My Beautiful Launderette, Chariots of Fire and Drowning by Numbers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781904764717
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	01/02/2007
Edition description:	second edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lester D. Friedman is scholar-in-residence for the Media and Society Program at Hobart William Smith Collage, Washington, D.C. Previous publications include The Jewish Image in American Film (1987), Unspeakable Images: Multiculturalism in American Cinema (1991), and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1999).

Table of Contents

List of Contributors     vii
Preface to the First Edition     xi
Preface to the Second Edition     xix
Acknowledgements     xxiii
Introduction: The Empire Strikes Out: An American Perspective on the British Film Industry   Lester D. Friedman     1
Cultural Contexts and Cinematic Constructions
The Religion of the Market: Thatcherite Politics and the British Film of the 1980s   Leonard Quart     15
The Last New Wave: Modernism in the British Films of the Thatcher Era   Peter Wollen     30
Images for Sale: The 'New' British Cinema   Thomas Elsaesser     45
History with Holes: Channel 4 Television Films of the 1980s   Paul Giles     58
The Repression of Communities: Visual Representations of Northern Ireland during the Thatcher Years   Brian Mcllroy     77
Re-presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film   Andrew Higson     91
Free from the Apron Strings: Representations of Mothers in the Maternal British State   Mary Desjardins     110
Filmmakers During the Thatcher Era
Power and Territory: The Emergence of Black British Film Collectives   Manthia Diawara     125
Encounters with Thatcherism: Four Women Filmmakers   Deborah Tudor     136
Women's Independent Cinema: The Case of Leeds Animation Workshop   Antonia Lant     159
The Body Politic: Ken Russell in the 1980s   Barry Keith Grant     182
'Everyone's an American Now': Thatcherite Ideology in the Films of Nicolas Roeg   Jim Leach     195
Insurmountable Difficulties and Moments of Ecstasy: Crossing Class, Ethnic and Sexual Barriers in the Films of Stephen Frears   Susan Torrey Barber     209
No Such Thing as Society: Television and the Apocalypse   Sean O'Sullivan     223
The Masochistic Fix: Gender Oppression in the Films of Terence Davies   Tony Williams     243
Local Focus, Global Frame: Ken Loach and the Cinema of Dispossession   James F. English     259
Allegories of Thatcherism: Peter Greenaway's Films of the 1980s   Michael Walsh     282
Private Practice, Public Health: The Politics of Sickness and the Films of Derek Jarman   Chris Lippard   Guy Johnson     301
Low Hopes: Mike Leigh Meets Margaret Thatcher   David Sterritt     315
Index     332

Editorial Reviews

Recommended.

Choice