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‘Laughter – tears – curtain’
Topsy-Turvy
in Mike Leigh
Chapter DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781847791986.00016
Online Publication Date:
19 Jul 2013
Abstract only
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This chapter illustrates that with the film Topsy-Turvy. Mike Leigh emerged from the closet, firmly declaring his long-standing delight in the comic operas of librettist William Schwenck Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. The emergence was a spectacular one given both the film's unusually lavish production values and the highly positive reaction to it. In America Topsy-Turvy was named the Year's Best Picture by both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. It also marked a breakthrough for Leigh in that it was the first film he made that had no television money in it at all, in any shape or form. This film had been Leigh's most purely pleasurable film since Life Is Sweet, it is a scrupulous, vibrant celebration of the theatre, of theatre folk in general, and of these two men of the theatre and their associates in particular.
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eISBN:
9781847791986
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Cover Mike Leigh
Subjects:
Film, Media and Music
Page Count:
15
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Series: British Film-Makers

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Cover Dance and politics

Dance and politics

Moving beyond boundaries

Author:
Dana Mills

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
21 Nov 2016
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
Available In:
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Dance has always been a method of self- expression for human beings. This book examines the political power of dance and especially its transgressive potential. Focusing on readings of dance pioneers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, Gumboots dancers in the gold mines of South Africa, the One Billion Rising movement using dance to protest against gendered violence, dabkeh in Palestine and dance as protest against human rights abuse in Israel, the Sun Dance within the Native American Crow tribe, the book focuses on the political power of dance and moments in which dance transgresses politics articulated in words. Thus the book seeks ways in which reading political dance as interruption unsettles conceptions of politics and dance.

Cover It’s a London thing

It’s a London thing

How rare groove, acid house and jungle remapped the city

Author:
Caspar Melville

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
21 Nov 2019
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
Available In:
Redeem Token

This book discusses the emergence in London of three specific dance music multicultures in the context of the racialised city. Focusing on rare groove, acid house and jungle it places the emergence of these multi-racial music cultures in the context of theories of space and the historical forces which racialised the city in the late 20th century. Based on a wide range of original interviews with cultural producers – DJs, promoters, producers and dancers - undertaken over 20 years, read alongside cultural theory and contemporary accounts, it argues that music and the practices of space around music have been a crucial way in which racial segregation has been challenged and multiculture has emerged in London.

Cover Tony Garnett

Tony Garnett

Author:
Stephen Lacey

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
19 Jul 2013
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
Available In:
Redeem Token

This is a book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home to the ‘must-see’ series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Tony Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts his career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions, focusing on the ways in which he has helped to define the role of the creative producer, shaping the distinctive politics and aesthetics of the drama he has produced, and enabling and facilitating the contributions of others. Garnett's distinctive contribution to the development of a social realist aesthetic is also examined, through the documentary-inspired early single plays to the subversion of genre within popular drama series.