Search results
nostalgia for a time when Spain dominated the globe, the show confronts viewers with the picture of an emergent empire coexisting with the daily misery lived on the streets and on every corner of urban spaces ( Martínez Shaw, 2019 ). To assess how an early modern epidemic provided the major backdrop to such an ambitious production, we start by placing the medical narrative in the genealogy of Spanish TV dramas and note the early influence of American
Halit Refiğ had impact on debates around Turkish national cinema both as a thinker and as a practitioner. Instrumental in establishing the Turkish Film Institute under MSU along with his director colleagues like Metin Erksan and Lutfi Akad, Refiğ lectured for many years at the first cinema training department. This translation is from his 1971 collection of articles titled Ulusal Sinema Kavgasi (Fight For National Cinema). Here Refiğ elaborates on the concept of national cinema from cultural perspectives framing Turkey as a continuation of Ottoman Empire and its culture distinct and different from western ideas of capitalism, bourgeoisie art and Marxism. For Refiğ, Turkish cinema should be reflected as an extension of traditional Turkish arts. Refiğ explores the potential to form a national cinema through dialogue,and dialectic within Turkish traditional arts and against western cinematic traditions of representation.
Costumes and censorship: the BBC’s Roman Empire (1970s) Part III As we have seen in Part II, from the 1950s onwards cinema had come under increasing pressure from television. Epics set in the ancient world were seen as a tool to counter this trend, with their spectacular sets, crowds and colours. Yet, by the mid-1960s, cine-antiquity had also reached a crisis point. Excessive and costly productions like Cleopatra (1963) and the dramatic failure of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) led to the temporary disappearance of the genre from the large screen. Maybe
This book provides an institutional case study of the BBC Television Service, as it undertook the responsibility of creating programmes that addressed the impact of black Britons, their attempts to establish citizenship within England and subsequent issues of race relations and colour prejudice. Beginning in the 1930s and into the post millennium, the book provides a historical analysis of policies invoked, and practices undertaken, as the Service attempted to assist white Britons in understanding the impact of African-Caribbeans on their lives, and their assimilation into constructs of Britishness. Management soon approved talks and scientific studies as a means of examining racial tensions, as ITV challenged the discourses of British broadcasting. Soon after, BBC 2 began broadcasting, and more issues of race appeared on the TV screens, each reflecting sometimes comedic, somewhat dystopic, often problematic circumstances of integration. In the years that followed, however, social tensions, such as those demonstrated by the Nottingham and Notting Hill riots, led to transmissions that included a series of news specials on Britain's Colour Bar, and docudramas, such as A Man From the Sun, which attempted to frame the immigrant experience for British television audiences, but from the African-Caribbean point of view. Subsequent chapters include an extensive analysis of television programming, along with personal interviews. Topics include current representations of race, the future of British television, and its impact upon multiethnic audiences. Also detailed are the efforts of Black Britons working within the British media as employees of the BBC, writers, producers and actors.
1 “Jolly proud you are a Britisher:” empire and identity, 1923–39 O n the evening of December 13, 1939, Val Gielgud, Head of the BBC’s Features and Drama Department, listened to the final installment of the Drama Department’s serialized adaptation of A. E. W. Mason’s imperial adventure story The Four Feathers. The following day he wrote to the producer of the series, Peter Creswell, to congratulate him on its success. He noted to Creswell that the Director-General, F. W. Ogilvie, and the Home Service Board praised the program,1 concluding that “the romantic
2 From the war to Westminster Abbey: the BBC and the empire, 1939–53 F or the historian, examining the BBC’s representation of empire during the Second World War is both challenging and particularly revealing. C onsistent with its policies from the 1930s, the BBC broadcast a considerable number of empire programs. As Chapter 1 made clear, these pre-war programs carried a significant amount of ideological content. But during the war, the empire and Commonwealth had to be constructed with even greater deliberation and precision. Although the BBC had resolved
“essential” that the BBC’s flagship channel, the Home Service, “strike keynotes attuned to the national position and outlook,” including “virility, a sense of endeavour, [and] courage.” Noting that the war would “drop largely out of public thinking,” he argued that the BBC needed to “inculcate a spirit of striving.” The British people, he claimed, were “nowhere near finished in our island or world story.” Haley advised Wellington to “constantly” project the empire and Commonwealth “as a great heritage” and produce stimulating programs on Britain’s role in the world. He
to be carefully balanced with unionist voices. Any program that even remotely called into question the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and its relation to Eire would never make it on the air. The BBC also placed great importance on broadcasting for national holidays and state occasions. Every year the BBC provided special broadcasts for Empire Day, Armistice Day, Christmas, as well as a host of other noteworthy anniversaries with national significance such as Trafalgar Day and Shakespeare’s birthday. The BBC also constructed a unitary British national
it was lacking in the early years of broadcasting. The BBC, in turn, helped maintain the popularity of the monarchy by providing it with a powerful new means of communication. Not unlike cinema during the same era, radio “replaced … the magic of distance with … the magic of familiarity” by bringing the voice of the King directly into the homes of his subjects.1 More importantly, the BBC projected the monarchy as an apt representation of the diversity of Great Britain and the British empire. The BBC framed monarchy as an ideal that united Britons under the umbrella
being shown throughout Britain and the British Empire, as well as elsewhere, has hardly been assessed. Nor has the relationship between Victoria’s long-standing interest in photography, still very much in evidence at the time of the Jubilee, and her response to ‘animated photography’. While John Plunkett has argued convincingly for seeing Victoria as ‘media made’, his focus is primarily on ‘the tremendous