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Barry Keith Grant's book, "100 American Horror Films," explores the enduring presence of the horror genre throughout film history. The book features a selection of one hundred American horror films spanning from the 1910s to 2019, including notable examples such as "Colour out of Space," "Midsommar," and "The Wind." Grant's introduction defines the genre as addressing universal fears while also responding to historically and culturally specific anxieties. Each film entry in the book provides a concise summary of the plot, credits, an image from the film, and insights into its significance within the horror genre and its historical-cultural context. While some readers may disagree with certain omissions, the book offers a comprehensive overview of American horror films. Additionally, Anne Billson's book, "The Thing," provides an authoritative analysis of the film's subversive and uncompromising approach to horror. Both books serve as valuable resources for those interested in exploring the genre further. [Extracted from the article]

Thus each chapter addresses a different aspect of cinema going memories. The intention of this project was to extend knowledge of cinema history with an emphasis on how films were received and the social experience of cinema going. The six chapters clearly set out different aspects of the 1960s cinema going experience- social experiences, sex and cinema going, the experience of watching American films and British films, European films, and postcolonial audiences. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores the interactions and cooperation between public-sector, business-sector, and civil-society stakeholders in developing British film policy for educational and cultural purposes. In particular, this paper adopts the Advocacy Coalition Framework to explain why and how public authorities, film industry organizations, and educationalists efficiently communicated and cooperated with each other in making the British Film Institute. By doing that, this paper explains (1) how commercial business and social workers, who were initially hostile, could build constructive partnerships; (2) how inactive, noninterventionist governments could be involved in the policymaking for cultural sectors; and (3) how private business could be persuaded into supporting cultural and educational policy for noncommercial purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Amber Film and Photography Collective's working-class affiliations and Berwick Street Film Collective's middle-class makeup shaped their divergent approaches to depicting 'working-class issues' by drawing on the films of both collectives, alongside archival materials and oral testimonies. By engaging in a comparative reading, I highlight the breadth of Amber's oeuvre, tracing the development of their filmmaking strategies--which included agitprop, the fusion of factual and fictional formal elements and transnational collaboration with the German Democratic Republic's film production company, Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA)--to demonstrate that, contrary to criticisms levelled by contemporary theorists clustered around Screen magazine and the British Film Institute, Amber transcended the constraints of Documentary Realism by incorporating radical avant-garde aesthetics into their oppositional practice. Concomitantly, Amber's radical filmmaking is positioned as relative to its members' working-class solidarities, with their concern for championing working-class cultures contrasted with Berwick Street's broader political agendas. Through foregrounding this politics/culture dialectic, the practical repercussions of Berwick Street's middle-class representation of 'working-class interests' are investigated while the theoretical criteria by which avant-garde depictions of 'working-class issues' are evaluated are themselves assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pop promos combine the commercial and artistic extremes of moving image production, capturing and expressing cutting edge contemporary attitudes in succinct and stylish ways. They have been an integral part of the British moving image industry since music video became a viable industry in the early 1980s, yet their place in British film and moving image history remains largely unsung. The British Film Institute (BFI) National Archive holds a varied collection of music videos acquired from the promo industry, TV broadcasters, and individual filmmakers that spans from the mid-1970s to the 2000s. A largely unexplored part of the national collection, it is a body of work ripe for research. This paper outlines various curatorial approaches taken to develop and enrich the archive's music video collection, including details about the 'British Landmark Music Video' collection, curated as part of the 'Fifty Years of British Music Video' project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spring 1986, Lindsay Anderson appeared in a television programme on British cinema. This was part of a series of three under the heading British Cinema: Personal View, produced by Thames Television. Anderson's contribution, Free Cinema 1956-? An Essay on Film by Lindsay Anderson, was written and directed by him. He was also the star of the programme, providing a lecture on the history of British cinema with himself at the very core, although, at the time of the production, Anderson's career was in decline and he was not involved in any film projects. Drawing on press materials, the programme itself and Anderson's personal papers in the University of Stirling library, this article analyses Anderson's personal conception of Free Cinema - according to his understanding, a short-lived documentary movement in the 1950s which eventually transformed itself into a series of feature films in the ensuing decades, particularly his own trilogy If.... (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982). The polemic in the programme was particularly aimed at the general idea of the British Film Year of 1985 and at the successful film producer David Puttnam, at the time well known for his contribution to what was sometimes called the 'New British Cinema' of the 1980s. Anderson, however, dismissed Puttnam as a film-maker concerned only with Oscars and economic success, and instead lauded the qualities of 'Free Cinema', a realist, non-conformist and radical aesthetic, as the most artistically rewarding tradition in British cinema. The programme was highly entertaining and was generally well received by the British press, but did not really strengthen Anderson's position within the British film industry, which might, or might not, have been Anderson's intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consecration of cultural products occurs both contemporaneously and retrospectively. This paper examines the influence of contemporaneous consecration on retrospective consecration in the UK film industry. We first examine the impact of professional and popular consecration on retrospective consecration using the list of “best films” compiled by the British Film Institute to gauge retrospective consecration. We then examine the impact of international film festivals on retrospective consecration. We show that experts and peers will have a differential effect on the process of retrospective consecration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the highlights of the British Film Institute (BFI) International Conference on Africa and the history of Cinematic Ideas that was held in London, England from September 9 to 10, 1995. According to conference director June Givanni, the event was organized as the centerpiece of the Screen Griots program. It was attended by established filmmakers and film and cultural theorists, including Idrissa Quedraogo and Gaston Kabore. Haile Gerima criticized the lack of study given to African audiences engaging with African cinema.

This article concentrates on the establishment and curation of the BFI Gallery at BFI Southbank (2007–2011), where the core, audience-facing cultural offer was extended to include contemporary artists' moving image installations. It considers the conditions that led the British Film Institute to favour commissioning over displaying, and the curatorial model of the temporary gallery commission over that of the collection-based film museum that had previously characterised the institution. The article discusses the critical and practical issues that affect the conceptualisation of the the BFI Gallery, such as the economic and political decisions of the day and the habitus of institutional management. To analyse the underlying mechanisms that triggered the changes of curatorial policies observed, consideration is given to the role of individual curators with a visual art background, who, from the early 2000s, reached the senior and executive levels of the BFI, an organisation previously led by cinema experts. The analysis uses the author's empirical experience as BFI curator to provide insight into the hidden cultural dynamics that generate the meaning of the work of art, with specific attention to curatorial moving image practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the thirty-year history of the Dinard Film Festival (until 2018, the Dinard Festival of British Film), with a particular focus on the financial support provided by bodies with industrial and/or cultural remits: specifically, the UK Film Council, the British Council and the British Film Institute. As I discuss, Dinard is a significant case study for understanding the British film-industrial relationship with France, but also for analysing the interrelationship between economic and cultural policy-making in the British film industry. As I also argue, looking at the history of the Dinard festival offers a significant example of the ways such showcases for 'national cinema' are bound up with the shifting contexts of film-industry policymaking. As I conclude, the changing economic fortunes in British film, and the economic contexts informing UK film policy, have not only impacted on Dinard, but also given the festival a renewed outlook – as well as a more political one in the recent contexts of the UK's EU referendum and 'Brexit'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the possibilities offered to researchers by the film holdings which can be found in archives that exist outside of the more conventional, subject-specific film archives in the UK such as those held by the British Film Institute. The Marks and Spencer Company Archive exists principally to hold the company records and related materials illustrating the history of one of the UK's most successful and long-established high-street retailers. Although their film holdings are extensive, these materials are somewhat tangential to the main collection and might not be a source that has been recognised to date by film scholars. Such collections also exist in a number of other commercial organisations, as well as public sector ones. The article details the holdings, arranging them into significant groupings, and analyses their style and content with particular attention to their potential status as both history on film and as film form. In doing so, it posits the opportunity to consider further exploration of film holdings normally thought of as outside film scholarship, and the value of more utilitarian forms of film-making than those usually found in entertainment or art cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Amber Film Collective is one of the very few survivors of the once numerous British Workshop Movement. Founded in 1969, Amber was influential in the key moments of the movement's existence, from the founding of the Independent Filmmakers Association, the wrangling of union recognition, access to regular broadcast through the new Channel 4 and steeply increasing grant income. From this point Amber's place in the movement became one of increasing contrast, maintaining independent income from separate businesses, refusing funder pressure to reform on hierarchical lines and successfully avoiding becoming a revenue client of the British Film Institute. Where most workshops lost their funding between 1986 and 1991, only to see the state assimilate their historic functions, Amber has continued for as long again without giving up its original principles and structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the interaction between an artists' cooperative known as London Film-makers Cooperative (LFMC) and the state arts funding bureaucracy in Great Britain. LFMC is an open-access film distributor and an exhibition group. Its distribution collection was an important resource for programmers and events managers, guaranteed the availability of films. LFMC was made a filmmakers organization, owned by and run for the benefit of filmmakers where it supplied the films for over 60 events across the world. The author contends that despite the activities of LFMC, which has raised the profile of experimental film, the Arts Council and the British Film Institute have failed to offer financial support to the struggling LFMC.

The article offers information on the British Film Institute's Regional Conference held at Warwick University in England in September 1980.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Christophe Dupin on the history of the British Film Institute (BFI) and another by Julia Knight and Peter Thomas on independent film distribution in Great Britain.

This article identifies and summarises the main findings of the AHRC research project 'Fifty Years of British Music Video, 1966–2016'. It contextualises the history of music video as a film practice within an unspoken cultural hierarchy of screen arts widely shared in universities, policy circles and the British Film Institute. The article documents the main stages in the development of the music video industry and highlights the extent to which the pioneers served as early adopters of new technologies in videotape, telecine and digital film-making. The ACTT consistently lobbied against music video producers, as did the Musicians' Union, and consequently music video producers emerged from the 1980s with virtually no protection of their rights. The ACTT's issue was new video technology which it opposed. It also opposed offline editing on video tape because it would lead to redundancies of film editors and potentially required fewer post-production crew. The MU's issue was royalty payments to session musicians and lip synch. The music video industry has functioned as a crucial R&D sector and incubator for new talent and new technologies in the British film and television industries as a whole, without experiencing any of the financial rewards, cultural status or copyright protections of the more esteemed 'screen arts'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the missing national film archive of Pakistan against the politics of competing cultural memory. Sharing a common past yet existing in the shadows of the Indian film industry, cinema in Pakistan found itself in an unusual predicament after decolonization and Partition. While filmmaking was expected to carry the imprint of national difference, the intercultural context of colonial India bequeathed the industry its traditions and personnel. Yet when the British Film Institute repatriated colonial Indian films in the mid-1960s, the holdings went entirely to India. The lack of a public film repository denied Pakistan not only its colonial heritage but also the systematic preservation of its postcolonial film culture. In the absence of a state archive, what has emerged in the country is a democratic archive consisting of independent collectors, magazine proprietors, and avid users. Using a term extracted from one of the archives, filmaria (film fever), Siddique reads in the popular film archives the contagious circumstances of intercultural cinema. It alerts us to a film contagion widespread in the subcontinental publics that thrives on filmgoing, cinematic resemblance, and embodied cultural memory, a condition caused by the displacements of Partition and the creation of national difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research from both academic and industry sources has repeatedly identified a mismatch between theory and practice in film and TV professionals’ education. A recent report for the British Film Institute has concluded that the skills provision for the industry is not fit for purpose. This investigation aims to reconcile the educational expectations of students, educators and employers and is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with British film-makers attending the Cannes Film Festival. The interviews trace their process of updating skills and know-how to meet the requirements of highly dynamic workflows and so provide a deeper understanding of the mental models underlying the film-making process. Preliminary findings lay the foundation for a grounded theory approach to a study of conceptual knowledge in film-making. Interview analysis establishes the core concept ‘learning by doing’ that gains meaning by deep integration with highly personal and diverse skills development strategies. The film-makers demonstrate how ‘doing’ is affected by previously watched films, by collaborator focused forms of ‘critical thinking’, based on constant communication with collaborators. These combined factors enable the production team’s increasingly shared vision of a film in preproduction. The findings are discussed in the context of established reflective practice concepts to enhance student employability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview is presented with Ian Francis, Director of the Flatpack Film Festival. Topics discussed include running projects in British cinema; an account of the Birmingham, England's film culture; and his involvement with British Film Institute's Film Audience Network and its implications on development of regional film culture.

From May 2000 until its demise in 2011, the UK Film Council (UKFC) was the main film funding body in the United Kingdom. While many critics have analysed the economic successes and failures of individual films that it funded over this period, little has been written about its influence on the UK film industry more broadly. Of the handful of articles that have addressed this area, the question of the diversity of the UK film industry, and the UKFC's alleged failure to make it more accessible, is a consistent theme, supported by damning data from Creative Skillset and the UKFC's own reports, which suggest that in many areas the industry is even less diverse now than it was when the UKFC was first established. Yet despite this evidence, there has until now been no engagement with the views of the staff actually making funding decisions at the UKFC. This article attempts to redress this oversight, by augmenting existing data with interviews with former leading figures in the UKFC's script development and diversity departments, in order to present a richer picture of the issues surrounding UK film funding and the 'cultural diversity' agenda. In so doing, I seek to unpick some of the common critiques levelled at the UKFC's record on diversity, and explore why the numerous measures that it put in place failed significantly to change the composition of the UK film industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes an “exercise in the archaeology of education” and focuses on the City of Birmingham (UK) in the year 1935 where the Education Committee allowed an experiment on the use of classroom film in senior elementary schools. Arrangements were made to provide projectors, films, operators, and screens for a series of exhibits at 80 schools. The aim of the experiment was to test the value of cinema for class teaching purposes. This article argues that this experiment with sound film could equally be considered an experiment in cultural learning. The first section describes the experiment and the local context in which it took place. The second section broadens the perspective by providing context beyond the local level that puts the experiment in time and place. The third and final section picks up on some of the findings of the first two sections and considers contemporary sources, mainly articles published in the British Film Institute’s film magazineSight and Sound, as well as recent scholarship on both educational and documentary film in order to discuss the notions of “background” and “excursive” film and to show that the experiment was a genuine adventure in cultural learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From 1988 until its closure in 1999, the British Film Institute’s groundbreaking Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) on London’s South Bank attracted several million visitors and critical acclaim. This account is authored by a member of the Curatorial team (1989–1996), and presented in three parts. First is a review of precedents and influences behind the project’s development and critical reception, including a review of its collections and education. Next is a reflection on two temporary exhibitions, home movies, and the problem of updating exhibitions, given priorities and attendance figures. Finally, MOMI’s closure and reinvention as MOMI 2 is considered in light of different approaches to media museums. The history of BFI’s MOMI is set within broader challenges of time-based media as a museum subject, and the article includes observations on practical considerations and their impact on conceptual and academic concerns. The author privileges exhibitions and displays on which he had a curatorial role and those that accentuated early popular visual culture, although these constitute a small part of the museum’s scope. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I apply correspondence analysis (CA) to data produced for the British Film Institute's (BFI) 'Opening our eyes' report published in 2011 to discover how age and gender shape the experience of television for audiences in the United Kingdom. Age is an important factor in shaping how audience perceive television, with older viewers describing the medium as 'informative', 'thought provoking', 'artistic', 'good for people's self-development' and 'escapist', while younger viewers are more likely to describe television as 'exciting', 'fashionable, and 'sociable'. Younger respondents are also more likely to describe the effect of television on people/society as negative. Variation in programme choice is highly structured in terms of age and gender, though the extent to which of these factors determine audience choice varies greatly. Gender is the dominant factor in explaining preferences for some programme types with age a secondary factor in several cases, while age is the explanatory factor for other genres for which gender seemingly has little influence. Male audiences prefer sports, factual entertainment, and culture programmes and female audiences reality TV/talent shows, game/quiz/panel shows, chat shows and soap operas. Older audiences prefer news, documentaries, and wildlife/nature programmes, while music shows/concerts and comedy/sitcoms are more popular with younger viewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights paucity of female film and television directors within the British media industry and also the under representation of women in films. The scenario before World War II had little opportunities for women directors; for most part post war into 1960's women directed children's films. A recent report from British Film Institute suggests an encouraging state of affairs for women, if women outnumber men directors.

The historiography of post-war British cinema has been dominated by the notion of the ‘Lost Continent’: a large body of work which was excluded by the realist critical establishment, in favour of ‘quality’ British films and, later, continental art cinema. ‘Return to the Lost Continent’ argues that the image of the critical establishment at the centre of this perspective is based on a flawed account of British film culture derived from a narrow range of evidence. Using newly accessible print sources, it aims to challenge the consensus view of British film culture before and after the Second World War, in particular by revealing the extent of the distribution of European films in and outside London, customarily and wrongly represented as an affair of the social elite. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay, on the political and cultural significance of the disaster films of the 1990s, was completed in 1999. I had just finished the editorial revisions on the original version [...]

The article discusses pre-1930s films relating to the world's fairs at the British Film Institute (BFI) National Archive. These include "Savage South Africa - Savage Attack and Repulse," by the Warwick Trading Company on the 1899 Greater Britain Exhibition, "Panorama of the Paris Exhibition No. 3," by Cecil Hepworth on the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, and "Exposition by Night," by James White and Edwin Porter on the 1901 Pan American Exposition. These films are seen as frivolous and do not report important events in-depth.

Celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2010, the BFI National Archive is one of the world's largest collections of film and television. This article is a short exploration of the Archive's television fiction collections and the ways in which they may be accessed by researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uneven access to television archives across Europe has posed a number of problems for transnational and historical comparison. Developments in online technologies have promised new opportunities for creating access to television content at national and international levels, yet the potential for transnational comparison remains problematic. This report focuses on Video Active, a major European collaboration between broadcasters, archives, technologists and television scholars to create online access to television programming and to promote comparative approaches to television history. The report will illustrate, however, a number of factors that continue to inhibit online access to television content, and it will show how classificatory schemes and metadata can influence the pre-selection, interpretation and comparison of accessible programming. The report will go on to explore how the project has developed practical solutions to some of these issues and will suggest that continued collaboration on a larger scale may yet hold the long-term answers to problems of access and interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the circumstances of the creation of British Film Institute (BFI) in the early 1930, the postwar transformation and its impact on the development of a national film culture in Great Britain. The first 15 years of BFI's existence was concerned with the promotion of film as a modern means of instruction. At the same time, BFI was removed from the early manifestations of a British film culture which emerged since the late 1920s. During the World War II years, BFI was criticized for its conservatism and incompetence. That pushed BFI to refocus its activities on the development of public appreciation of film as an art form through the National Film Library, film criticism, network of film societies, and the collection of information about films.

The article provides information on the crisis encountered by the British Film Institute (BFI) in 1970 in London, England. These include the tensions happening within the Board of Governors, between governors and management, between management and staffs. A group of BFI members was asking for change and if possible to change the entire Board of Governors. At the end, the chairman of the board has resigned as well as Paddy Whannel, the charismatic head of BFI's Educational Department. According to a report, the crisis occurred when BFI was recreated under its new Chairman of Governors, Dennis Forman, where it had grown but was not able to keep up with changes in the surrounding culture.

This article presents an interview with Colin MacCabe, former head of production of the British Film Institute (BFI). Asked when he joined the BFI, he answered that he joined the BFI in summer of 1985. He explained that the BFI's brief is to make films that would not otherwise get made by other film production organizations. He said that the BFI did not see itself as addressing the needs of the film industry such as training or nurturing talent.

The article assesses media study teachings at the Northern College in Yorkshire, England. The College was established in 1978 to offer a second chance to learn for adults. The chief financier of the college are the four Labour-controlled local authorities of Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield. The teaching methods used at the college are student-centered, meaning there is almost no lecturing and teaching taking place in small groups. Media studies at the college was established after it won a British Film Institute award. The main areas of Northern College's media studies program include using the media and media analysis.

The article explores new developments in British independent film. The current policies of the British Film Institute and Channel Four for funding independent film and video work are outlined. Few films are examined closely in relation to their conditions of production as well as how an independent socialist feminist fiction film practice could develop in future. The independent film sector in Great Britain is defined by its funding agencies whose policies determine what film can be made, and how they are likely to be distributed.

The article offers information on two recent monographs in the possession of the British Film Institute (BFI). These are "Television and History," by Colin McArthur and "Television: Ideology and Exchange," by John Caughie. It underscores that these monographs continue BFI's commitment to a series which promotes to understand the function of television both as an institution and practice. These are written from a historical materialist point of view and are both informed by the Althusserian concept of Ideological State Apparatus (ISA).

This section presents a letter of resignation from Paddy Whannel, education officer of the British Film Institute (BFI) Education Department, to Dennis Forman, chairman of the BFI, about the position of the BFI towards film education. Whannel notes that his resignation from the BFI Education Department was precipitated by the continuing crisis at the institute. He cites that the management failed to defend its departments from attacks. He also comments on the position of the BFI towards film education.

An open letter to the staff of the British Film Institute (BFI) in London, England, is presented. The six signatories of this letter, all members of the Education Department, have resigned from the BFI. Their motive were mixed and some of them had personal reasons for wanting to leave but their resignations were precipitated by the continuing crisis at the institute. The signatories claimed that they have lived in a state of permanent uncertainty about their future without support or guidance from the management.