Cinema of the United Kingdom
Cinema of the United Kingdom | |
---|---|
No. of screens | 4,264 (2017)[1] |
• Per capita | 7.3 per 100,000 (2017)[1] |
Main distributors | Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures StudioCanal Universal Pictures Pathé 20th Century Studios Entertainment One[2] |
Produced feature films (2017)[3] | |
Total | 285 |
Fictional | 213 (74.7%) |
Animated | 5 (1.8%) |
Documentary | 66 (23.2%) |
Number of admissions (2017)[4] | |
Total | 170,600,000 |
• Per capita | 2.9 |
Gross box office (2017)[5] | |
Total | £1.38 billion |
National films | £515 million (37.4%) |
Cinema of the United Kingdom |
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List of British films |
British horror |
1888–1919 |
1920s |
1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 |
1930s |
1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 |
1940s |
1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 |
1950s |
1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 |
1960s |
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 |
1970s |
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 |
1980s |
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 |
1990s |
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 |
2000s |
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 |
2010s |
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 |
2020s |
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 |
By Country |
The
The identity of the British film industry, particularly as it relates to
In 2009, British films grossed around $2 billion worldwide and achieved a market share of around 7% globally and 17% in the United Kingdom.[16] UK box-office takings totalled £1.1 billion in 2012,[17] with 172.5 million admissions.[18]
The British Film Institute has produced a poll ranking what they consider to be the 100 greatest British films of all time, the BFI Top 100 British films.[19] The annual BAFTA Awards hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts are considered to be the British equivalent of the Academy Awards.[20]
History
Origins and silent films
The world's first moving picture was shot in
The first people to build and run a working
Although the earliest British films were of everyday events, the early 20th century saw the appearance of narrative shorts, mainly comedies and melodramas. The early films were often melodramatic in tone, and there was a distinct preference for story lines already known to the audience, in particular, adaptations of
In 1898,
.Directed by Walter R. Booth in 1901, Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost is the earliest film adaptation of Charles Dickens's festive novella A Christmas Carol.[24] Booth's The Hand of the Artist (1906) has been described as the first British animated film.[25][26]
In 1902, Ealing Studios was founded by Will Barker. It has become the oldest continuously-operating film studio in the world.
In 1902, the earliest colour film in the world was made; capturing everyday events. In 2012, it was found by the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford after lying forgotten in an old tin for 110 years. The previous title for earliest colour film, using Urban's inferior Kinemacolor process, was thought to date from 1909. The re-discovered films were made by pioneer Edward Raymond Turner from London who patented his process on 22 March 1899.[27]
In 1909, Urban formed the Natural Color Kinematograph Company, which produced early colour films using his patented Kinemacolor process. This was later challenged in court by Greene, causing the company to go out of business in 1914.[28]
In 1903,
In 1911, the
In 1913, stage director Maurice Elvey began directing British films, becoming Britain's most prolific film director, with almost 200 by 1957.
In 1914, Elstree Studios was founded, and acquired in 1928 by German-born Ludwig Blattner, who invented a magnetic steel tape recording system that was adopted by the BBC in 1930.
In 1915, the Kinematograph Renters’ Society of Great Britain and Ireland was formed to represent the film distribution companies. It is the oldest film trade body in the world. It was known as the Society of Film Distributors until it changed its name again to the Film Distributors’ Association (FDA).[30]
In 1920, Gaumont opened Islington Studios, where Alfred Hitchcock got his start, selling out to Gainsborough Pictures in 1927. Also in 1920 Cricklewood Studios was founded by Sir Oswald Stoll, becoming Britain's largest film studio, known for Fu Manchu and Sherlock Holmes film series.
In 1920, the short-lived company
By the mid-1920s the British film industry was losing out to heavy competition from the United States, which was helped by its much larger home market – in 1914 25% of films shown in the UK were British, but by 1926 this had fallen to 5%.[32] The Slump of 1924 caused many British film studios to close, resulting in the passage of the Cinematograph Films Act 1927 to boost local production, requiring that cinemas show a certain percentage of British films. The act was technically a success, with audiences for British films becoming larger than the quota required, but it had the effect of creating a market for poor quality, low cost films, made to satisfy the quota. The "quota quickies", as they became known, are often blamed by historians for holding back the development of the industry. However, some British film makers, such as Michael Powell, learnt their craft making such films. The act was modified with the Cinematograph Films Act 1938 assisted the British film industry by specifying only films made by and shot in Great Britain would be included in the quota, an act that severely reduced Canadian and Australian film production.
Ironically, the biggest star of the silent era, English comedian Charlie Chaplin, was Hollywood-based.[33]
The early sound period
Scottish solicitor
By 1927, the largest cinema chains in the United Kingdom consisted of around 20 cinemas but the following year Gaumont-British expanded significantly to become the largest, controlling 180 cinemas by 1928 and up to 300 by 1929. Maxwell formed ABC Cinemas in 1927 which became a subsidiary of BIP and went on to become one of the largest in the country, together with Odeon Cinemas, founded by Oscar Deutsch, who opened his first cinema in 1928. By 1937, these three chains controlled almost a quarter of all cinemas in the country. A booking by one of these chains was indispensable for the success of any British film.[32]
With the advent of sound films, many foreign actors were in less demand, with English
Starting with
Many of the British films with larger budgets during the 1930s were produced by
In 1933, the
In 1934, J. Arthur Rank became a co-founder of British National Films Company and they helped create Pinewood Studios, which opened in 1936. Also in 1936, Rank took over General Film Distributors and in 1937, Rank founded The Rank Organisation. In 1938, General Film Distributors became affiliated with Odeon Cinemas.
Rising expenditure and over-optimistic expectations of expansion into the American market caused a financial crisis in 1937,[45] after an all-time high of 192 films were released in 1936. Of the 640 British production companies registered between 1925 and 1936, only 20 were still active in 1937. Moreover, the 1927 Films Act was up for renewal. The replacement Cinematograph Films Act 1938 provided incentives, via a "quality test", for UK companies to make fewer films, but of higher quality, and to eliminate the "quota quickies". Influenced by world politics, it encouraged American investment and imports. One result was the creation of MGM-British, an English subsidiary of the largest American studio, which produced four films before the war, including Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939).
The new venture was initially based at Denham Studios. Korda himself lost control of the facility in 1939 to the Rank Organisation.[46] Circumstances forced Korda's The Thief of Bagdad (1940), a spectacular fantasy film, to be completed in California, where Korda continued his film career during the war.
By now contracted to Gaumont British, Alfred Hitchcock had settled on the thriller genre by the mid-1930s with
Second World War
"The idea of a nation of devoted cinema-goers is inextricably linked with the number of classic films released during the war years. This was British cinema’s ‘golden age’, a period in which filmmakers such as Humphrey Jennings, David Lean, Powell and Pressburger, and Carol Reed came to the fore."[48]
Published in
Many other films helped to shape the popular image of the nation at war. Among the best known of these films are In Which We Serve (1942), We Dive at Dawn (1943), Millions Like Us (1943) and The Way Ahead (1944). The war years also saw the emergence of The Archers partnership between director Michael Powell and the Hungarian-born writer-producer Emeric Pressburger with films such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and A Canterbury Tale (1944).
Two Cities Films, an independent production company releasing their films through a Rank subsidiary, also made some important films, including the Noël Coward and David Lean collaborations This Happy Breed (1944) and Blithe Spirit (1945) as well as Laurence Olivier's Henry V (1944). By this time, Gainsborough Studios were releasing their series of critically derided but immensely popular period melodramas, including The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945). New stars, such as Margaret Lockwood and James Mason, emerged in the Gainsborough films.
Post-war cinema
Towards the end of the 1940s, the Rank Organisation became the dominant force behind British film-making, having acquired a number of British studios and the Gaumont chain (in 1941) to add to its Odeon Cinemas. Rank's serious financial crisis in 1949, a substantial loss and debt, resulted in the contraction of its film production.[50] In practice, Rank maintained an industry duopoly with ABPC (later absorbed by EMI) for many years.
For the moment, the industry hit new heights of creativity in the immediate post-war years. Among the most significant films produced during this period were
Under the
Following the Cinematograph Film Production (Special Loans) Act 1949, the National Film Finance Corporation (NFFC) was established as a British film funding agency.
The Eady Levy, named after Sir Wilfred Eady was a tax on box office receipts in the United Kingdom in order to support the British Film industry. It was established in 1950 coming into effect in 1957. A direct governmental payment to British-based producers would have qualified as a subsidy under the terms of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and would have led to objections from American film producers. An indirect levy did not qualify as a subsidy, and so was a suitable way of providing additional funding for the UK film industry whilst avoiding criticism from abroad.
In 1951, the
During the 1950s, the British industry began to concentrate on popular comedies and World War II dramas aimed more squarely at the domestic audience. The war films were often based on true stories and made in a similar low-key style to their wartime predecessors. They helped to make stars of actors like John Mills, Jack Hawkins and Kenneth More. Some of the most successful included The Cruel Sea (1953), The Dam Busters (1954), The Colditz Story (1955) and Reach for the Sky (1956).
The Rank Organisation produced some comedy successes, such as
Popular comedy series included the "Doctor" series, beginning with
Less restrictive censorship towards the end of the 1950s encouraged film producer
Social realism
The
Together with future James Bond co-producer Harry Saltzman, dramatist John Osborne and Tony Richardson established the company Woodfall Films to produce their early feature films. These included adaptations of Richardson's stage productions of Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1959), with Richard Burton, and The Entertainer (1960) with Laurence Olivier, both from Osborne's own screenplays. Such films as Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (also 1960), Richardson's A Taste of Honey (1961), Schlesinger's A Kind of Loving (1962) and Billy Liar (1963), and Anderson's This Sporting Life (1963) are often associated with a new openness about working-class life or previously taboo issues.
The team of Basil Dearden and Michael Relph, from an earlier generation, "probe[d] into the social issues that now confronted social stability and the establishment of the promised peacetime consensus".[54] Pool of London (1950).[55] and Sapphire (1959) were early attempts to create narratives about racial tensions and an emerging multi-cultural Britain.[56] Dearden and Relph's Victim (1961), was about the blackmail of homosexuals. Influenced by the Wolfenden report of four years earlier, which advocated the decriminalising of homosexual sexual activity, this was "the first British film to deal explicitly with homosexuality".[57] Unlike the New Wave film makers though, critical responses to Dearden's and Relph's work have not generally been positive.[54][58]
The 1960s
As the 1960s progressed, American studios returned to financially supporting British films, especially those that capitalised on the "
At the same time, film producers Harry Saltzman and
American directors were regularly working in London throughout the decade, but several became permanent residents in the UK. Blacklisted in America,
Historical films as diverse as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Tom Jones (1963), and A Man for All Seasons (1966) benefited from the investment of American studios. Major films like Becket (1964), Khartoum (1966) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) were regularly mounted, while smaller-scale films, including Accident (1967), were big critical successes. Four of the decade's Academy Award winners for best picture were British productions, including six Oscars for the film musical Oliver! (1968), based on the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist.
After directing several contributions to the BBC's Wednesday Play anthology series, Ken Loach began his feature film career with the social realist Poor Cow (1967) and Kes (1969). Meanwhile, the controversy around Peter Watkins The War Game (1965), which won the Best Documentary Film Oscar in 1967, but had been suppressed by the BBC who had commissioned it, would ultimately lead Watkins to work exclusively outside Britain.
1970s
American studios cut back on British productions, and in many cases withdrew from financing them altogether. Films financed by American interests were still being made, including Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), but for a time funds became hard to come by.
More relaxed censorship also brought several controversial films, including Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's Performance, Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971), and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) starring Malcolm McDowell as the leader of a gang of thugs in a dystopian future Britain.[59]
Other films during the early 1970s included the Edwardian drama
In the early 1970s, the government reduced its funding of the National Film Finance Corporation so the NFFC started to operate as a consortium, including with banks, which led to them using more commercial criteria for funding British films rather than focusing on quality or new talent, moving to fund films based on TV shows such as Up Pompeii (1971).[60]
Some other British producers, including Hammer, turned to television for inspiration, and big screen versions of popular sitcoms like On the Buses (1971) and Steptoe and Son (1972) proved successful with domestic audiences, the former had greater domestic box office returns in its year than the Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever and in 1973, an established British actor Roger Moore was cast as Bond in, Live and Let Die, it was a commercial success and Moore would continue the role for the next 12 years. Low-budget British sex comedies included the Confessions of ... series starring Robin Askwith, beginning with Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974). More elevated comedy films came from the Monty Python team, also from television. Their two most successful films were Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), the latter a major commercial success, probably at least in part due to the controversy at the time surrounding its subject.
Some American productions did return to the major British studios in 1977–79, including the original Star Wars (1977) at Elstree Studios, Superman (1978) at Pinewood, and Alien (1979) at Shepperton. Successful adaptations were made in the decade of the Agatha Christie novels Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978). The entry of Lew Grade's company ITC into film production in the latter half of the decade brought only a few box office successes and an unsustainable number of failures
1980s
In 1980, only 31 British films were made,[6] a 50% decline from the previous year and the lowest number since 1914, and production fell again in 1981 to 24 films.[6] The industry suffered further blows from falling cinema attendances, which reached a record low of 54 million in 1984, and the elimination of the 1957 Eady Levy, a tax concession, in the same year. The concession had made it possible for an overseas based film company to write off a large amount of its production costs by filming in the UK – this was what attracted a succession of big-budget American productions to British studios in the 1970s.[citation needed] These factors led to significant changes in the industry, with the profitability of British films now "increasingly reliant on secondary markets such as video and television, and Channel 4 ... [became] a crucial part of the funding equation."[61]
With the removal of the levy,
The 1980s soon saw a renewed optimism, led by smaller independent production companies such as Goldcrest, HandMade Films and Merchant Ivory Productions.
Handmade Films, which was partly owned by
Goldcrest producer David Puttnam has been described as "the nearest thing to a mogul that British cinema has had in the last quarter of the 20th century."[65] Under Puttnam, a generation of British directors emerged making popular films with international distribution. Some of the talent backed by Puttnam — Hugh Hudson, Ridley Scott, Alan Parker, and Adrian Lyne — had shot commercials; Puttnam himself had begun his career in the advertising industry. When Hudson's Chariots of Fire (1981) won 4 Academy Awards in 1982, including Best Picture, its writer Colin Welland declared "the British are coming!".[66] When Gandhi (1982), another Goldcrest film, picked up a Best Picture Oscar, it looked as if he was right.
It prompted a cycle of period films – some with a large budget for a British film, such as David Lean's final film A Passage to India (1984), alongside the lower-budget Merchant Ivory adaptations of the works of E. M. Forster, such as A Room with a View (1986). But further attempts to make 'big' productions for the US market ended in failure, with Goldcrest losing its independence after Revolution (1985) and Absolute Beginners (1986) were commercial and critical flops. Another Goldcrest film, Roland Joffé's The Mission (also 1986), won the 1986 Palme d'Or, but did not go into profit either. Joffé's earlier The Killing Fields (1984) had been both a critical and financial success. These were Joffé's first two feature films and were amongst those produced by Puttnam.
Mainly outside the commercial sector, film makers from the new commonwealth countries had begun to emerge during the 1970s.
With the involvement of Channel 4 in film production, talents from television moved into feature films with
1990s
Compared to the 1980s, investment in film production rose dramatically. In 1989, annual investment was a meagre £104 million. By 1996, this figure had soared to £741 million.[68] Nevertheless, the dependence on finance from television broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4 meant that budgets were often low and indigenous production was very fragmented: the film industry mostly relied on Hollywood inward investment. According to critic Neil Watson, it was hoped that the £90 million apportioned by the new National Lottery into three franchises (The Film Consortium, Pathé Pictures, and DNA) would fill the gap, but "corporate and equity finance for the UK film production industry continues to be thin on the ground and most production companies operating in the sector remain hopelessly under-capitalised."[69]
These problems were mostly compensated by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, a film studio whose British subsidiary Working Title Films released a Richard Curtis-scripted comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). It grossed $244 million worldwide and introduced Hugh Grant to global fame, led to renewed interest and investment in British films, and set a pattern for British-set romantic comedies, including Sliding Doors (1998) and Notting Hill (1999). Other Working Titles films included Bean (1997), Elizabeth (1998) and Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001). PFE was eventually sold and merged with Universal Pictures in 1999, the hopes and expectations of "building a British-based company which could compete with Hollywood in its home market [had] eventually collapsed."[70]
Tax incentives allowed American producers to increasingly invest in UK-based film production throughout the 1990s, including films such as
Among the more successful British films were the
(1999).After a six-year hiatus for legal reasons the
Mike Leigh emerged as a significant figure in British cinema in the 1990s, with a series of films financed by Channel 4 about working and middle class life in modern England, including Life Is Sweet (1991), Naked (1993) and his biggest hit Secrets & Lies (1996), which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Other new talents to emerge during the decade included the writer-director-producer team of John Hodge, Danny Boyle and Andrew Macdonald responsible for Shallow Grave (1994) and Trainspotting (1996). The latter film generated interested in other "regional" productions, including the Scottish films Small Faces (1996), Ratcatcher (1999) and My Name Is Joe (1998).
2000s
The first decade of the 21st century was a relatively successful one for the British film industry. Many British films found a wide international audience due to funding from BBC Films, Film 4 and the UK Film Council, and some independent production companies, such as Working Title, secured financing and distribution deals with major American studios. Working Title scored three major international successes, all starring Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, with the romantic comedies
The new decade saw a major new film series in the Harry Potter films, beginning with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2001. David Heyman's company Heyday Films has produced seven sequels, with the final title released in two parts – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 in 2010 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011. All were filmed at Leavesden Studios in England.[72]
Aardman Animations' Nick Park, the creator of Wallace and Gromit and the Creature Comforts series, produced his first feature-length film, Chicken Run in 2000. Co-directed with Peter Lord, the film was a major success worldwide and one of the most successful British films of its year. Park's follow up, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was another worldwide hit: it grossed $56 million at the US box office and £32 million in the UK. It also won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
However it was usually through domestically funded features throughout the decade that British directors and films won awards at the top international film festivals. In 2003,
The start of the 21st century saw Asian British cinema assert itself at the box office, starting with East Is East (1999) and continuing with Bend It Like Beckham (2002). Other notable British Asian films from this period include My Son the Fanatic (1997), Ae Fond Kiss... (2004), Mischief Night (2006), Yasmin (2004) and Four Lions (2010). Some argue it has brought more flexible attitudes towards casting Black and Asian British actors, with Robbie Gee and Naomie Harris take leading roles in Underworld and 28 Days Later respectively.
2005 saw the emergence of The British Urban Film Festival, a timely addition to the film festival calendar, which recognised the influence of urban and black films on UK audiences and consequently began to showcase a growing profile of films in a genre previously not otherwise regularly seen in the capital's cinemas. Then, in 2006, Kidulthood, a film depicting a group of teenagers growing up on the streets of West London, had a limited release. This was successfully followed up with a sequel Adulthood (2008) that was written and directed by actor Noel Clarke. The success of Kidulthood and Adulthood led to the release of several other films in the 2000s and 2010s such as Bullet Boy (2004), Life and Lyrics (2006), The Intent (2016), its sequel The Intent 2: The Come Up (2018), Blue Story and Rocks (both 2019), all of starred Black-British actors.
Like the 1960s, this decade saw plenty of British films directed by imported talent. The American
Despite increasing competition from film studios in Australia and Eastern Europe, British studios such as
In February 2007, the UK became home to Europe's first DCI-compliant fully digital multiplex cinemas with the launch of Odeon Hatfield and Odeon Surrey Quays (in London), with a total of 18 digital screens.
In November 2010, Warner Bros. completed the acquisition of Leavesden Film Studios, becoming the first Hollywood studio since the 1940s to have a permanent base in the UK, and announced plans to invest £100 million in the site.[75][76]
A study by the British Film Institute published in December 2013 found that of the 613 tracked British films released between 2003 and 2010 only 7% made a profit. Films with low budgets, those that cost below £500,000 to produce, were even less likely to gain a return on outlay. Of these films, only 3.1% went into the black. At the top end of budgets for the British industry, under a fifth of films that cost £10million went into profit.[77]
2010s
On 26 July 2010 it was announced that the UK Film Council, which was the main body responsible for the development of promotion of British cinema during the 2000s, would be abolished, with many of the abolished body's functions being taken over by the British Film Institute. Actors and professionals, including James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Pete Postlethwaite, Damian Lewis, Timothy Spall, Daniel Barber and Ian Holm, campaigned against the Council's abolition.[79][80] The move also led American actor and director Clint Eastwood (who had filmed Hereafter in London) to write to the British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in August 2010 to protest the decision to close the Council. Eastwood warned Osborne that the closure could result in fewer foreign production companies choosing to work in the UK.[81][82] A grass-roots online campaign was launched[83] and a petition established by supporters of the Council.
Countering this, a few professionals, including Michael Winner and Julian Fellowes, supported the Government's decision.[84][85][86] A number of other organisations responded positively.
At the closure of the UK Film Council on 31 March 2011, The Guardian reported that "The UKFC's entire annual budget was a reported £3m, while the cost of closing it down and restructuring is estimated to have been almost four times that amount."[87] One of the UKFC's last films, The King's Speech, is estimated to have cost $15m to make and grossed $235m, besides winning several Academy Awards. UKFC invested $1.6m for a 34% share of net profits, a valuable stake that will pass to the British Film Institute.[88]
In June 2012, Warner opened the re-developed Leavesden studio for business.[90] The most commercially successful British directors in recent years are Paul Greengrass, Mike Newell, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott and David Yates.[91]
In January 2012, at Pinewood Studios to visit film-related businesses, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that his government had bold ambitions for the film industry: "Our role, and that of the BFI, should be to support the sector in becoming even more dynamic and entrepreneurial, helping UK producers to make commercially successful pictures that rival the quality and impact of the best international productions. Just as the British Film Commission has played a crucial role in attracting the biggest and best international studios to produce their films here, so we must incentivise UK producers to chase new markets both here and overseas."[92]
The film industry remains an important earner for the British economy. According to a UK Film Council press release of 20 January 2011, £1.115 billion was spent on UK film production during 2010. A 2014 survey suggested that British-made films were generally more highly rated than Hollywood productions, especially when considering low-budget UK productions.
2020s
In November 2022, director Danny Boyle expressed a negative sentiment of the British film industry in recent years, stating that "I am not sure we are great filmmakers, to be absolutely honest. As a nation, our two artforms are theatre, in a middle-class sense, and pop music, because we are extraordinary at it."[93]
Art cinema
Although it had been funding British experimental films as early as 1952, the British Film Institute's foundation of a production board in 1964—and a substantial increase in public funding from 1971 onwards—enabled it to become a dominant force in developing British art cinema in the 1970s and 80s: from the first of Bill Douglas's Trilogy My Childhood (1972), and of Terence Davies' Trilogy Childhood (1978), via Peter Greenaway's earliest films (including the surprising commercial success of The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)) and Derek Jarman's championing of the New Queer Cinema. The first full-length feature produced under the BFI's new scheme was Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's Winstanley (1975), while others included Moon Over the Alley (1975), Requiem for a Village (1975), the openly avant-garde Central Bazaar (1973), Pressure (1975) and A Private Enterprise (1974) – the last two being, respectively, the first British Black and Asian features.
The release of Derek Jarman's
With the launch of Channel 4 and its Film on Four commissioning strand, Art Cinema was promoted to a wider audience. However, the Channel had a sharp change in its commissioning policy in the early 1990s and Greenaway and others were forced to seek European co-production financing.
Film technology
In the 1970s and 1980s, British studios established a reputation for great special effects in films such as
British special effects technicians and production designers are known for creating visual effects at a far lower cost than their counterparts in the US, as seen in
From the 1990s to the present day, there has been a progressive movement from traditional film opticals to an integrated
The availability of high-speed internet has made the British film industry capable of working closely with U.S. studios as part of globally distributed productions. As of 2005, this trend is expected to continue with moves towards (currently experimental) digital distribution and projection as mainstream technologies. The British film This Is Not a Love Song (2003) was the first to be streamed live on the Internet at the same time as its cinema premiere.
See also
- British Academy Film Awards, hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, are the British equivalent of the Academy Awards.[20]
- British Film Institute
- Cinema of Northern Ireland
- Cinema of Scotland
- Cinema of Wales
- Cine-variety
- Hollywood and the United Kingdom – British source material in American films, US studio subsidiaries in the UK, etc.
- List of British films
- List of British actors
- List of British film directors
- List of British film studios
- List of cinema of the world
- List of highest-grossing films in the United Kingdom
- London in film
- London Film School
- National Film and Television School
- World cinema
- UK cinema chains
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Further reading
- General
- Aldgate, Anthony and Richards Jeffrey. 2002. Best of British: Cinema and Society from 1930 to the Present. London: I.B. Tauris
- Babington, Bruce; Ed. 2001.British Stars and Stardom. Manchester: Manchester University Press
- Chibnall, Steve and Murphy, Robert; Eds. 1999. British Crime Cinema. London: Routledge
- Cook, Pam. 1996. Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema. London BFI
- Curran, James and Porter, Vincent; Eds. 1983. British Cinema History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Raymond Durgnat (1970). A Mirror for England: British Movies from Austerity to Affluence. Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-09503-2.
- Harper, Sue. 2000. Women in British Cinema: Mad Bad and Dangerous to Know. London: Continuum
- Higson, Andrew. 1995. Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Higson, Andrew. 2003. English Heritage, English Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Hill, John. 1986. Sex, Class and Realism. London: BFI
- Landy, Marcia. 1991. British Genres: Cinema and Society, 1930–1960. Princeton University Press
- Lay, Samantha. 2002. British Social Realism. London: Wallflower
- Brian McFarlane; Anthony Slide (2003). The encyclopedia of British film. Methuen Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-413-77301-9.
- Monk, Claire and Sargeant, Amy. 2002. British Historical Cinema. London Routledge
- Murphy, Robert; Ed. 2001. British Cinema Book 2nd Edition. London: BFI
- Perry, George. 1988. The Great British Picture Show. Little Brown, 1988.
- Richards, Jeffrey. 1997. Films and British national identity / From Dickens to Dad's Army . Manchester University Press
- Street, Sarah. 1997. British National Cinema. London: Routledge.
- Yvonne Tasker (2002). 50 Contemporary Filmmakers. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-18974-3.
- Pre–World War II
- Low, Rachael. 1985. Film Making in 1930s Britain. London: George, Allen and Unwin
- Rotha, Paul. 1973. Documentary diary; an informal history of the British documentary film, 1928–1939, New York: Hill and Wang
- Swann, Paul. 2003. The British Documentary Film Movement, 1926–1946. Cambridge University Press
- World War II
- Aldgate, Anthony and Richards, Jeffrey 2nd Edition. 1994. Britain Can Take it: British Cinema in the Second World War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
- Barr, Charles; Ed. 1986. All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema. London: British Film Institute
- Murphy, Robert. 2000. British Cinema and the Second World War. London: Continuum
- [fr] Rousselet, Francis Et le Cinéma Britannique entra en guerre ..., Cerf-Corlet, 2009, 240pp.
- Post-War
- Friedman, Lester; Ed. 1992. British Cinema and Thatcherism. London: UCL Press
- Geraghty, Christine. 2000. British Cinema in the Fifties: Gender Genre and the New Look. London Routledge
- Gillett, Philip. 2003. The British Working Class in Postwar Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press
- Murphy, Robert; Ed. 1996. Sixties British Cinema. London: BFI
- Shaw, Tony. 2001. British Cinema and the Cold War. London: I.B. Tauris
- 1990s
- Brown, Geoff. 2000. Something for Everyone: British film Culture in the 1990s.
- Brunsdon, Charlotte. 2000. Not Having It All: Women and Film in the 1990s.
- Murphy, Robert; Ed. 2000. British Cinema of the 90s. London: BFI
- Cinema and government
- Dickinson, Margaret and Street, Sarah. 1985. Cinema and the State: The Film industry and the British Government, 1927–84. London: BFI
- Miller, Toby. 2000. The Film Industry and the Government: Endless Mr Beans and Mr Bonds?
- Albert Moran (1996). Film Policy: International, National, and Regional Perspectives. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-09791-8.