Space, Place, Spectacle

The Cultural Politics of Place: Local Representation and Oppositional Discourse in Two Films

“…The origins of that tradition are usually traced to the films of John Grierson in the 1930s, but the work of other documentary film makers in the post-war period such as Denis Mitchell, and kitchen-sink dramas like Saturday night and Sunday morning and A taste of honey, significantly inflected its modes of representing workingclass people and places. Higson (1984) comments, for example, on the importance of the panoramic shot of 'our town from that hill' to the kitchen-sink films, which set the dramas' scenes. He notes that this shot works to establish the viewer as distant both socially and spatially from the milieu of the film (Higson 1984, 17-19).…”

Dead industrial atmosphere: Popular music, cultural heritage and industrial cities

“…The 'industrial atmosphere' began to be romanticized by European film directors as early as the 1960s. British 'kitchen sink' films (Higson 1984) and the last efforts of Italian neorealismo (Mariani and Barron 2011) adopt industrial desolation as a setting and reflection of individual existential destinies. From the mid-1970s, it is also possible to recognize the industrial atmosphere as a newly formed 'urban ethos'.…”

Film Finances and the British New Wave

“…But in constructing the shot as spectacular, the distance is disavowed; the impenetrability of the real living city is transformed into a surface, a representation, an image which does not need to be penetrated, but which can be gazed at in fascination precisely as image'. 46 (pp.…”