Film, In Theory: How the BFI Transformed Film Culture
Full-length book
Published by Bloomsbury/British Film Institute
Expected 2024
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Full-length book
Published by Bloomsbury/British Film Institute
Expected 2024
Film, In Theory offers the first sustained history of the formation of modern film studies in Britain. It balances unpublished archival materials from the BFI archive and interviews with key practitioners from the era with an approach rooted in cultural and intellectual history to tell the story of the BFI’s fresh and invigorating approach to film studies, rooted in an intellectual seriousness and an engagement with contemporary theoretical developments from abroad. Film, unlike literature, did not have territory to defend. The borders were open and it was able to borrow from a remarkably wide range of sources: aesthetics, Marxism, French theory, the Frankfurt School.
The book also showcases the BFI as actively allowing for the creation of an intellectual environment deeply sympathetic to ideas, especially those adapted from continental Europe and one which allowed for these ideas to flourish and transform into publications which remain deeply influential to this day. The book aims to evoke the sense of being swept along by an artistic and intellectual tide where the films of Jean-Luc Godard, the re-discovery of Hollywood, the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the semiology of Roland Barthes, and the politics of the 'New Left' combined and collided to intoxicating effect.
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The book also showcases the BFI as actively allowing for the creation of an intellectual environment deeply sympathetic to ideas, especially those adapted from continental Europe and one which allowed for these ideas to flourish and transform into publications which remain deeply influential to this day. The book aims to evoke the sense of being swept along by an artistic and intellectual tide where the films of Jean-Luc Godard, the re-discovery of Hollywood, the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the semiology of Roland Barthes, and the politics of the 'New Left' combined and collided to intoxicating effect.
