A new book by Bert Hogenkamp, author of "Deadly Parallels: Film and the Left in Britain, 1929-39" (1986, reprint 2000), has been published last week by Lawrence & Wishart, London. "Film, Television and the Left in Britain, 1950 to 1970" is a comprehensive survey of the left's approach to films and television from the period after the second world war until the beginnings of the growth of independent cinema in the late 1960's. It charts the left's first grapplings with the new mass medium of television, the left's continuing use of film as campaigning material, and its work to show in Britain films the socialist world. The book covers the use of film by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the anti- apartheid movement (including "Let my people go" and "The war game"), early party political broadcasts by the Labour Party, the use of films by unions, and work by progressive film-makers such as Lindsay Anderson. It also documents how efforts to screen socialist films led to support for the work of other film-makers from the margins, such as Satyajit Ray and Ingmar Bergman. Hogenkamp also analyses the left's political attitudes towards film, including the pioneering work on television carried out by the New Left, and the left's early attitudes towards violence in film. In addition he discusses questions of minority access to TV and film, and the restructuring of the British film industry which took place at this time.
ISBN 0 85315 905 X GBP 14.99
Further information on: www.l-w-bks.co.uk
Posted: 25 July 2000