Introduction: British art cinema - creativity, experimentation and innovation

This Introduction engages with issues such as Britain’s traditions of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism and how these pertain to the history of British film. We consider how far British films conform to class-based, ideologically-informed notions of ‘high art’; the tensions between highbrow and low art in British cinema; the complexities of state-funded and independent British film-making; and the question of how far artistic creativity, entertainment and commerce might co-exist within a conceptual British ‘art’ cinema. Attention is paid to the relationship between the modernist movement and British cinema; the relationship between British cinema, Hollywood and US popular culture; historical conditions in which British art cinema develops and flourishes; and the transnational nature of much of what we call British cinema and British art cinema in particular.