British Historical Cinema: The History, Heritage and Costume Film
by Claire Monk
Claire Monk & Amy Sargeant (eds) , London & New York: Routledge, 2002. 269pp. ISBN: 0-415-23809-9 HB/0-415-23810-2 PB.
REVIEW COVERAGE:
'Claire Monk and Amy Sergeant’s collection British Historical Cinema contains some... more
REVIEW COVERAGE:
'Claire Monk and Amy Sergeant’s collection British Historical Cinema contains some interesting essays, but their own contributions are particularly astute. Their Introduction is admirably forthright in the flexibility which is accorded to the genre of period films. They do not concern themselves
overmuch with nomenclature, but rather with the variety of appropriate terms (period/costume/heritage/historical) and the possibility of creative slippage between them. Monk makes it clear that ‘heritage’ film is a critical rather than industrial construct. In her essay, she points out the pitfalls of a ‘top-down’ approach, in which debates are dominated
by inductive approaches. She insists on a separation between the films’ ideological hinterland and their narratives: ‘neither their political perspective nor their ideological workings can simply be read off from their subject-matter’ (p. 191). Monk insists that the dominance of the heritage debate in academic circles has had a deleterious effect, in that it has rendered all-but-invisible important films like The French Lieutenant’s Woman which play with history in a more creative way.'
– Sue Harper, Emeritus Professor of Film History, University of Portsmouth, UK, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 1:1, 2004.
-------
COVER BLURB
Films recreating or addressing 'the past' - recent or distant, actual or imagined - have been a mainstay of British cinema since the silent era.
From Elizabeth to Carry On Up The Khyber, and from the heritage-film debate to issues of authenticity and questions of genre, British Historical Cinema explores the ways in which British films have represented the past on screen, the issues they raise and the debates they have provoked. Discussing films from biopics to literary adaptations, and from depictions of Britain's colonial past to the re-imagining of recent decades in retro films such as Scandal or Velvet Goldmine, a range of contributors ask whose history is being represented, from whose perspective, and why.
-----
Historical Comedy on Screen: Subverting History with Humour
by Hannu Salmi
http://books.google.fi/books?id=FNYYXr0LN8kC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%2
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/187859763
In 1893, Friedrich Engels branded history 'the cruelest goddess of all.' This sorrowful vision of the past is deeply... more In 1893, Friedrich Engels branded history 'the cruelest goddess of all.' This sorrowful vision of the past is deeply rooted in the Western imagination, and history is thus presented as a joyless playground of inevitability rather than a droll world of possibilities. There are few places this is more evident than in historical cinema which tends to portray the past in a somber manner. Historical Comedy on Screen examines this tendency paying particular attention to the themes most difficult to laugh at and exploring the place where comical and historical storytelling intersect. The first scholarly book of its kind, this work emphasizes the many oft-overlooked comical renderings of history and asks what they have to tell us if we begin to take them seriously.
In Search of Milk and Honey: The Theater of 'Soviet Jewish Statehood' (1934-49)
In the mid-1930s, when the Soviet regime established Birobidzhan as the "Soviet Jewish state" with Yiddish... more In the mid-1930s, when the Soviet regime established Birobidzhan as the "Soviet Jewish state" with Yiddish as its official language, the local Yiddish theater assumed new prominence. "In Search of Milk and Honey" focuses on the theater's role as the standard bearer and guiding spirit of this controversial exercise in nation building. The reconstruction of the ideological and cultural impulses underlying the theater's repertoire not only reveals the circumstances of the social experiment conceived in Birobidzhan, but also presents Jewish culture in the USSR from another perspective.
DownloadAncient Greece in Film and Popular Culture (2006)
My second book. Second edition came out in 2008, with a new chapter on '300'. My second book. Second edition came out in 2008, with a new chapter on '300'.