Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom: Decades of Decline, 1945–65

2020-03-31
Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom: Decades of Decline, 1945–65
Author: Sam Manning
Publisher: University of London Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1912702363
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Cinema-going was the most popular commercial leisure activity in the first half of the twentieth century, peaking in 1946 with 1.6 billion recorded admissions. Though ‘going to the pictures’ remained a popular pastime, the transition to peacetime altered citizens’ leisure habits. During the 1950s increased affluence, the growth of television ownership and the diversification of leisure led to rapid declines in attendance. Cinema attendances fell in all regions, but the speed, nature and extent of decline varied widely across the United Kingdom. By linking national developments to detailed case studies of Belfast and Sheffield, this book adds nuance to our understanding of regional variations in film exhibition, audience habits and cinema-going experiences during a period of profound social and cultural change. Drawing on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative sources, Cinema and Cinema-Going conveys the diverse nature of this important industry, and the significance of place as a determinant of film attendance in post-war Britain.

Decades Decline Cinemas Cinema-Going U

2020-03-31
Decades Decline Cinemas Cinema-Going U
Author: Sam Manning
Publisher: University of London Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9781912702350
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Cinema-going was the most popular commercial leisure activity in the United Kingdom during the first half of the twentieth century, with attendance growing significantly during World War II and peaking in 1946 with 1.6 billion recorded admissions. Though "going to the pictures" remained a popular pastime for the remainder of the forties, the transition from war to peacetime altered citizens' leisure habits. During the fifties, a range of factors led to rapid declines in attendance, and by 1965, admissions had plummeted to 327 million. Cinema attendance fell in all regions, but the speed, nature, and extent of this decline varied widely across the United Kingdom. By presenting detailed case studies of two similarly-sized industrial cities, Belfast and Sheffield, this book adds nuance and detail to the discussion of regional variations in film exhibition and audience habits. Using a wide range of sources, such as oral testimony, box-office data, newspapers, and trade journals, Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom conveys the diverse and ever-changing nature of the cinema industry.

Multicultural Britain

2024-08-15
Multicultural Britain
Author: Kieran Connell
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2024-08-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1805261894
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Between the end of the Second World War and the early twenty-first century, Britain became multicultural. This vivid book tells that remarkable story. Kieran Connell, an historian of Irish and German heritage who grew up in Balsall Heath, inner-city Birmingham, takes readers into multicultural communities across Britain at key moments in their development. Journeying far beyond London, Multicultural Britain explores the messy contradictions of the country’s transition into today’s diverse society. It reveals the ordinary people who have forged Britain’s multiculturalism; skewers public leaders, from Enoch Powell to Harold Wilson to Margaret Thatcher, who have too often weaponised race for their own political ends; and shines a light on the shifting nature of British racism, revealing its enduring day-to-day impact on ethnic-minority groups. Between postcolonial reckonings and immigration anxieties, how people live together in Brexit Britain remains an urgent question for our time. Connell’s fresh, thought-provoking book unveils British multiculturalism not as a problematic idea, but as a rich and complex lived reality.

Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom

2020
Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom
Author: Sam Manning
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:
GET BOOK

Cinema-going was the most popular commercial leisure activity in the first half of the twentieth century, peaking in 1946 with 1.6 billion recorded admissions. Though 'going to the pictures' remained a popular pastime, the transition to peacetime altered citizens' leisure habits. During the 1950s increased affluence, the growth of television ownership and the diversification of leisure led to rapid declines in attendance. Cinema attendances fell in all regions, but the speed, nature and extent of decline varied widely across the United Kingdom. By linking national developments to detailed case studies of Belfast and Sheffield, this book adds nuance to our understanding of regional variations in film exhibition, audience habits and cinema-going experiences during a period of profound social and cultural change. Drawing on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative sources, Cinema and Cinema-Going conveys the diverse nature of this important industry, and the significance of place as a determinant of film attendance in post-war Britain.

Reel Change

2022-08-16
Reel Change
Author: Richard Wallace
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2022-08-16
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 0861969839
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Ten years ago, a technological revolution swept through cinemas around the world, as analogue projectors were replaced with digital equipment. It was not just the plastic medium of film that was removed from projection boxes during this transformation; most cinemas took this opportunity to also evict the human projectionists who were hitherto in charge of screenings. Projectionists had been hidden from the sight of audiences for most of the history of photographic moving image projection, and their redundancies went largely unnoticed and unremarked upon. This book focuses attention on what has been happening behind film spectators' heads for the past 130 years, and attempts to write the history of cinema in Britain from the perspective of its habitually overlooked and undervalued projectionists, beginning in the silent era and continuing to the present day. Drawing upon extensive archival research and lengthy interviews with former projectionists, it documents the key facets and challenges of their work, and how these evolved in response to previous waves of significant technological change. It evaluates how projectionists helped to design and maintain key aesthetic characteristics of the 20th century big screen experience. It shows how the institution of cinema in Britain has been historically underpinned by the harsh exploitation of projectionists by many employers, detailing inadequate wage levels and poor working conditions that formerly provoked government investigation, and explaining why these problems were never successfully ameliorated by trade unions. It also charts in depth the recent fateful transition to digital projection, delineating how and why projectionists were so swiftly and ruthlessly consigned to the past, and assessing whether this form of entertainment should be considered diminished by their super session.

New Perspectives on Early Cinema History

2022-06-02
New Perspectives on Early Cinema History
Author: Mario Slugan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2022-06-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350181994
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In this book, editors Mario Slugan and Daniël Biltereyst present a theoretical reconceptualization of early cinema. To do so, they highlight the latest methods and tools for analysis, and cast new light on the experience of early cinema through the application of these concepts and methods. The international host of contributors evaluate examples of early cinema across the globe, including The May Irwin Kiss (1896), Un homme de têtes (1900), The Terrible Turkish Executioner (1904) and Tom Tom the Piper's Son (1905). In doing so, they address the periodization of the era, emphasizing the recent boon in the availability of primary materials, the rise of digital technologies, the developments in new cinema history, and the persistence of some conceptualizations as key incentives for rethinking early cinema in theoretical and methodological terms. They go on to highlight cutting-edge approaches to the study of early cinema, including the use of the Mediathread Platform, the formation of new datasets with the help of digital technologies, and exploring the early era in non-western cultures. Finally, the contributors revisit early cinema audiences and exhibition contexts by investigating some of the earliest screenings in Denmark and the US, exploring the details of black cinema going in Harlem, and examining exhibition practices in Germany.

Quartet

2023-02-28
Quartet
Author: Leah Broad
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0571366139
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The lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women from a stunning debut biographer. 'Fabulous.' Sunday Times ' A rare gift.' Financial Times 'Passionate ... Vivid ... Timely.' Telegraph 'Readable and inspiring.' Guardian 'Compelling ... Ambitious ... Poignant.' Spectator 'Magnificent.' Kate Mosse 'Riveting.' Antonia Fraser 'A breath of fresh air.' Kate Molleson 'Fascinating.' Alexandra Harris 'Wonderful.' Claire Tomalin 'Splendid.' Miranda Seymour 'Remarkable.' Fiona Maddocks 'Pioneering.' Andrew Motion ' Brilliant' Helen Pankhurst Ethel Smyth (b.1858): Famed for her operas, this trailblazing queer Victorian composer was a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller and committed Suffragette. Rebecca Clarke (b.1886): This talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty was one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra, later celebrated for her modernist experimentation. Dorothy Howell (b.1898): A prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms, her reputation as the 'English Strauss' never dented her modesty; on retirement, she tended Elgar's grave alone. Doreen Carwithen (b.1922): One of Britain's first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II's coronation film, her success hid a 20-year affair with her married composition tutor . In their time, these women were celebrities. They composed some of the century's most popular music and pioneered creative careers; but today, they are ghostly presences, surviving only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten - until now. Leah Broad's magnificent group biography resurrects these forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Lighting up a panoramic sweep of British history over two World Wars, Quartet revolutionises the canon forever.

Mary and Mr. Eliot

2023-03-21
Mary and Mr. Eliot
Author: Mary Trevelyan
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2023-03-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0374717591
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Mary and Mr. Eliot is a twin portrait of T. S. Eliot and its author, the formidable Mary Trevelyan. In 1938 T. S. Eliot, already “a Classic in his lifetime,” struck up a friendship with Mary Trevelyan. This passionately curious woman, an intrepid traveler who, like Eliot, was deeply involved in the affairs of the Church of England, served as the warden of the Student Movement House, mere yards from the poet and editor’s office at Faber and Faber. Their relationship was domestic rather than artistic, characterized by churchgoing, conversation, record-playing, day trips to the English countryside with Mary at the wheel of the car Tom bought her, and Eliot cooking up sausages in his shirtsleeves. Over the years, their friendship deepened, and she came to believe it might grow into something more. Twice she proposed marriage, but Eliot always led her to understand that any such commitment would be impossible for him. Then the revelation of his long attachment to Emily Hale—and the sudden shock of his marriage to his secretary, Valerie Fletcher—caused a rupture between Trevelyan and the poet that could not be overcome. Mary Trevelyan left a unique chronicle—including diaries, letters, and pictures—that charts their twenty-year relationship. Now Erica Wagner has given it shape and context, bringing this untold story to light for the first time. Mary and Mr. Eliot is a tale of joy, misunderstanding, and betrayal that feels utterly modern and deeply human.