Such films are offered as a counterintuitive brand of Made in Britain patriotism. Frears also seems to ask the question: what does it mean to be English? This idea of redemption in unfavourable circumstance is revisited in Loach’s most recent contribution to British cinema, the 2012 film The Angels’ Share. Nor does he claim his protagonists’ innocence. The uncle informs Omar’s poor, white boyfriend, with the authority of a native Englishman, that England will hold nothing for him, despite it being his home country. A combination of pride and shame, they champion the extraordinariness of ordinary people struggling in impossible circumstances. Asked about his intentions in making such a potentially inflammatory film, Frears was adamant that he had no desire to disgrace the church for events that had occurred half a century ago, rather hoping to explore a significant yet forgotten chapter of the institution’s history. They are political statements and artistic renderings of a country still struggling with class inequality and racial tension. My Beautiful Laundrette, released in 1985, is the tale of Omar, a young, second-generation Pakistani man, navigating the new economic landscape of Thatcher’s reforms, clashing with the growing resentment of British nationalists and discovering what it means to be gay in 1980s Britain. Britain, at times a grim and grey place with an often dark history, receives no special treatment in this regard. This is England takes place in the early 1980s, in the midst of rapid deindustrialisation and in the aftermath of the Falklands War. Character-driven and unpolished, they are a project in the humanisation of those individuals whose faces have been obscured by prejudice in contemporary Britain. He holds that it is not as simple as residing on one side of an ethnic rift. The cultural touchstones of British cinema rarely paint a pretty picture. Learning on Screen - the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council, On Demand Television and Radio for Education, Learning on Screen's Off-Air Back-up Recording Service, Independent Radio News Archive, (1973-1995), Everything you need to know about our Newsreels resource, Resource on the study and use of film in history, Watch a selection of archive films from the history of Gaumont Sound News, A growing collection of BoB Playlists specially curated by academics from a diverse range of disciplines, Teaching activities and other resources designed using our curated BoB playlists, Overview of the research resources available to our members as well as opportunities for collaboration, Exploring the possibility of making our archive of over 2.4 million television and radio broadcasts, COVID-19 Broadcast Media Recording Project, Recording service (BoB) to document the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, Understand How Copyright Regulates the Use of Creative Works in Education, Best practice for citing any kind of audiovisual, Research-led video essays guide for students, teachers and researchers.

In 2006, director Shane Meadows released what would become compulsory viewing for anyone looking to better understand the cultural history of modern-day England. Here, Frears depicts the complexity at the root of British society in the 1980s, elucidating the divide not only between colour, but also between class. Identified with their directors rather than with the industry, the New Wave films tended to address issues around masculinity that would become common in British social realism.

Rather, he places them, and by proxy their actions, in the context of a particular social and political environment, in which the cycles of violence and poverty are a fact of everyday life. The protagonist is 13-year-old Shaun, left fatherless by the conflict and bullied at school for his unfashionable trousers. Culture Trip stands with Black Lives Matter. Learning on Screen - The British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council, Women’s Work in British Film and Television, The London Broadcasting Company (LBC) | Independent Radio News (IRN), The Independent Local Radio Programme Sharing Scheme 1983-1990, Central Southern England Independent Local Radio 1975 to 1990, Screen Plays: The Theatre Plays on British Television, Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio. Other British social realist films that attracted American distribution include Brassed Off(1996) about the decline in the coal mining industry and the life of a colliery brass band distributed my Miramax, Billy Elliot (2000) again set at the time of the miner’s strike with violence on picket lines, distributed by Universal Studios and Made in Dagenham (2010) distributed by Paramount about the Ford sewing machinists strike … A comedy-drama entirely different in tone to Kes, it tells the story of a group of offenders on a community payback scheme. Character-driven and unpolished, they are a project in the humanisation of those individuals whose faces have been obscured by prejudice in contemporary Britain. Britain’s struggles with change and difference have also been well-documented by Stephen Frears in his earlier films. Since its origins in the documentary movement of the 1930s, with its twin figureheads John Grierson and Humphrey Jennings, it has generally been the most critically venerated tradition in domestic filmmaking. Indeed, the filmmakers extolled as British national treasures, filmmakers such as Frears, tend to have one thing in common: unwillingness to sugar-coat the dismal.

Whilst being sympathetic to his characters, Loach does not skirt around the very real problem of violence in their communities — indeed, his depictions of this violence are brutal and unflinching. While Omar’s uncle is a businessman thriving in Britain’s economic climate, exploiting the perks of his job and “squeezing the tits of the system”, his father, a weathered socialist, lies incapacitated by a combination of his alcoholism and disillusionment. The New Wave protagonist was usually a working-class male without bearings in a society in which … 12 Results