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Introduction

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EMI Films and the Limits of British Cinema
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Abstract

Focusing on the tension between theories of British national cinema and recent conceptualisations of transnational cinema, this chapter introduces the work produced by EMI Films, the largest British film company of the 1970s and 1980s. It places the company’s emergence within the context of British filmmaking in the 1960s and explores the reasons for its omission from most histories of British cinema, arguing that this is primarily due to its nature as a transnational company. This chapter concludes with the broader question ‘where does “national” cinema end and “transnational” cinema begin?’, and therefore ‘what are the limits of British cinema’?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Forbes, B. (30 October 1969) Transcript of unpublished interview with Bryan Forbes. Columbia/EMI/Warner Collection, Item 16. London: BFI.

  2. 2.

    Lovell, A. (1972) ‘The unknown cinema of Britain’. Cinema Journal, 11(2), pp. 1–8.

  3. 3.

    Petley, J. (1986) ‘The lost continent’, in Barr, C. (ed.) All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema. London: BFI, pp. 98–119.

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    Hill, J. (2010) ‘Revisiting British film studies’. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 7(2), pp. 299–310.

  5. 5.

    Shail, R. (2008) ‘Introduction’, in Shail, R. (ed.) Seventies British Cinema. London: Palgrave, p. xii.

  6. 6.

    Shail, R. (2008), p. xii.

  7. 7.

    Smith, J. (2008) ‘Glam, spam and Uncle Sam: Funding diversity in 1970s British film production’, in Shail, R. (ed.) Seventies British Cinema. London: Palgrave, p. 69.

  8. 8.

    Stubbs, J. (2009) ‘The Eady Levy: A runaway bribe? Hollywood production and British subsidy in the early 1960s’. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 6(1), p. 3.

  9. 9.

    Street, S. (2002) Transatlantic Crossings: British Feature Films in the USA. New York: Continuum, p. 169.

  10. 10.

    Stubbs, J. (2009), p. 7.

  11. 11.

    Dickinson, M. and Street, S. (1985) Cinema and State: The Film Industry and the British Government, 1927–1984. London: BFI Publishing, p. 238.

  12. 12.

    Murphy, R. (1986) ‘Under the shadow of Hollywood’, in Barr, C. (ed.) All Our Yesterdays. London: BFI, p. 65.

  13. 13.

    The Annual Register (1970), p. 442.

  14. 14.

    Dickinson, M. and Street, S. (1985), p. 240.

  15. 15.

    The Annual Register (1971), p. 436.

  16. 16.

    Higson, A. (1994) ‘A diversity of film practices: Renewing British cinema in the 1970s’, in Moore-Gilbert, B. (ed.), The Arts in the 1970s: Cultural Closure, London: Routledge, p. 226.

  17. 17.

    Higson, A. (1994), p. 226.

  18. 18.

    Newland, P. (2010) Don’t Look Now: British Cinema in the 1970s, London: Intellect, p. 14.

  19. 19.

    Macnab, G. (1993) J Arthur Rank and the Rise of the British Film Industry, London: Routledge, pp. 19–20.

  20. 20.

    Harper, S. and Smith, J. (2013) ‘Social Space’, in Harper, S. and Smith, J. (ed.) British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 269–274.

  21. 21.

    Hill, J. (1992) ‘The issue of national cinema and British film production’, in Petrie, D. (ed.) New Questions of British Cinema. London: BFI, pp. 10–11.

  22. 22.

    Hill, J. (1992), p. 11.

  23. 23.

    Hill, J. (1992), p. 16.

  24. 24.

    Higson, A. (1989) ‘The concept of national cinema’. Screen, 30(4), p. 36.

  25. 25.

    Higson, A. (1989), p. 36.

  26. 26.

    Hill, J. (1992), p. 14.

  27. 27.

    Hjort, M. (2010) ‘On the Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism’, in Durovicová, N. and Newman, K. (eds.) World Cinema, Transnational Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 12–13.

  28. 28.

    Christie, I. (2013) ‘Where is national cinema today (and do we still need it)?’. Film History, 25(1–2), p. 19.

  29. 29.

    Higbee, W. and Lim, S. (2010) ‘Concepts of transnational cinema: towards a critical transnationalism in film studies’, Transnational Cinemas, 1(1), p. 18.

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Moody, P. (2018). Introduction. In: EMI Films and the Limits of British Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94803-4_1

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