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The University of Southampton
Humanities

The Idea of ‘Nationality’ and British Film Policy Seminar

Origin: 
Film
Time:
16:00 - 17:45
Date:
9 May 2017
Venue:
Lecture Theatre B Avenue Campus Faculty of Humanities University of Southampton SO17 1BF

For more information regarding this seminar, please email Dr Ruby Cheung at Ruby.Cheung@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

Part of the Film Research Seminar Series 2016 - 2017. All welcome.

ABSTRACT:

Despite a turn away from the ‘national’ in much contemporary film analysis, discourses of the ‘national’ do, nevertheless, continue to shape how films of various kinds are categorised, funded, promoted and understood by a range of social actors from politicians and civil servants to filmmakers, critics and audiences. By focusing upon the history of British film policy, this paper will consider how legal definitions of a ‘British’ film have both employed and sustained specific conceptions of nationality. Examining, in particular, the ‘Cultural Test’ for ‘British film’, first introduced in 2007, the paper will consider the extent of its ‘break’ from earlier ‘economic’ British film policies and examine its role in the encouragement of Hollywood production within the UK. In doing so, the presentation will indicate how ‘national’ discourses and practices have continued to inform and structure the economic and cultural dynamics of contemporary ‘British’ filmmaking and, in doing so, support, as much as oppose, ‘transnational’ and globalising trends.

Speaker information

Professor John Hill, Royal Holloway, University of London. Professor John Hill is Professor of Media, Royal Holloway, University of London. Hill is the author of a number of books including Cinema and Northern Ireland: Film, Culture and Politics (2006) and Ken Loach: The Politics of Film and Television (2011) as well as the co-editor of various books and journals including special issues of the Journal of British Cinema and Television on ‘Film in Britain in the New Millennium’ (2012), the Journal of International Cultural Policy on ‘Film Policy in a Globalised Cultural Economy’ (2016) and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television on ‘Forgotten Television Drama’ (2017). He is also a former Director of the UK Film Council and Governor of the British Film Institute.

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