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Film, in Theory: The BFI Education Department and Film Culture

Film, in Theory: The BFI Education Department and Film Culture

Hardcover

Film StudiesGeneral EducationGeneral Sociology

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1839026332
ISBN13: 9781839026331
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Feb 19 2026
Pages: 176
Weight: 0.61
Height: 0.60 Width: 6.20 Depth: 9.30
Language: English

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 It balances unpublished archival materials from the BFI archive and interviews with key figures from the era, including Laura Mulvey, Colin MacArthur, Jacqueline Rose, Judith Williamson, and many more, with an approach rooted in cultural and intellectual history to tell the story of the BFI's fresh and invigorating approach to film studies.

The book tells the story of the institute's pioneering education programme, spearheaded by Paddy Whannel. It also details the remarkable work undertaken by Screen journal, including first-hand accounts of the writing and editing of Laura Mulvey's hugely influential essay on visual pleasure and narrative cinema. During this period of cultural and intellectual experimentation, the theoretical borders were open and key figures at the BFI borrowed from a remarkably wide range of sources spanning aesthetics, Marxism, French theory, and the Frankfurt School. Film Studies emerged amidst 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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Film Studies