Cinema Memories

A People's History of Cinema-going in 1960s Britain

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by Melvyn Stokes, Matthew Jones and Emma Pett

Type: Studies
Subject: Countries > Great Britain
Keywords: Great Britain, 1960s, sociology
Publishing date: 2023
1st publishing: 2022
Publisher: BFI Publishing
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 256 pages
6 x 9 inches (15.5 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-1-83902-529-7

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Book Presentation:
Cinema Memories brings together and analyses the memories of almost a thousand people of going to the cinema in Britain during the 1960s. It offers a fresh perspective on the social, cultural and film history of what has come to be seen as an iconic decade, with the release of films such as A Taste of Honey, The Sound of Music, Darling, Blow-Up, Alfie, The Graduate, and Bonnie and Clyde.
Drawing on first-hand accounts, authors Melvyn Stokes, Matthew Jones and Emma Pett explore how cinema-goers constructed meanings from the films they watched - through a complex process of negotiation between the films concerned, their own social and cultural identities, and their awareness of changes in British society. Their analysis helps the reader see what light the cultural memory of 1960s cinema-going sheds on how the Sixties in Britain is remembered and interpreted.
Positioning their study within debates about memory, 1960s cinema, and the seemingly transformative nature of this decade of British history, the authors reflect on the methodologies deployed, the use of memories as historical sources, and the various ways in which cinema and cinema-going came to mean something to their audiences.

About the authors:
Melvyn Stokes is Professor of Film History, and Director of the AHRC-funded 'Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s' research project at University College London, UK. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Princeton, a Fulbright Exchange Professor at Mount Holyoke College and a Visiting Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris He has written and edited twelve books, including D.W. Griffith's 'The Birth of a Nation': A History of 'the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time' (2007). He is currently President of SERCIA, the European film organisation.Matthew Jones is Reader in Cinema Audiences and Reception at De Montfort University, UK. He has published widely on mid-century cinema audiences and science fiction film and television. He is the co-editor of Time Travel in Popular Media: Essays on Film, Television, Literature and Video Games (2015).Emma Pett is Professor at the University of York, UK. She has published on the reception and regulation of films in The New Review of Film and Television Studies, The Journal of British Cinema and Television and Transnational Cinemas, and has chapters in Live Cinema: Cultures, Economies, Aesthetics (2017) and Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli's Monster Princess (2018).

Press Reviews:
"This research is an excellent reminder of the importance of the cinema experience in that culturally significant decade … and it also serves to point out just how much has changed over the last fifty years … [The book] may provoke nostalgia in some older readers, whilst for younger readers it's a fascinating window into an almost lost world." ―Cinema Retro Magazine

"Cinema Memories paints a fascinating portrait of the place of cinema in the lives and imaginations of its British audiences in the 1960s. Based on an extensive collection of interviews and questionnaires, it makes a vivid contribution both to the social history of the period and to the rapidly developing field of memory studies." ―Richard Maltby, Flinders University, Australia

"Cinema Memories maps exciting and accessible new routes through the spaces and places of 1960s cinema and social history in Britain. It deftly connects New Cinema History's methodological emphasis on empirical contexts of cinema-going and film reception with intellectual traditions grounded in British Cultural Studies and People's History." ―Jeffrey Klenotic, University of New Hampshire, USA

See the publisher website: BFI Publishing

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