Claire Monk

The concept of 'heritage cinema' is now firmly established as an influential - as well as much-debated and contested - critical framework for the discussion of period or historical representation in film, most prominently with reference to British heritage and post-heritage film successes since the 1980s, but also to comparable examples from Europe, North America and beyond. These successes have ranged from Merchant Ivory's A Room with a View, Maurice, Howards End and The Remains of the Day, via Jane Austen adaptations such as Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility to post-heritage adaptations such as Sally Potter's Orlando. Yet the very idea of the heritage film has rested on untested assumptions about its audiences. This book breaks significant new ground in the scholarship on contemporary period films, and makes a distinctive new contribution to the growing field of film-audience studies, by presenting the first empirically based study of the audiences for quality period films. Monk engages directly with two highly contrasting sections of these audiences, surveyed in the UK in the late 1990s, to explore their identities, their wider patterns of film taste, and above all their attitudes and pleasures - in relation to the period films they enjoy and on issues central to debates around the heritage film, literary adaptation and cultural value - with illuminating and unpredicted results.

This is a study of audiences for historical representation in film. The period drama is a British phenomenon but this is the first empirically-based study of the genre's audience. By exploring the attitudes and habits of this audience, it breaks new ground both in scholarship of contemporary period films and in film-audience studies. The book contrasts two opposite sections of late-1990s UK audiences, which has illuminating and unpredicted results. It includes an extensive discussion of Merchant Ivory productions and Jane Austen adaptations. It includes 11 tables that illustrate the findings of the Heritage Audience Survey. There are 3 appendices contain details of the questionnaire and the demographics of respondents.

Films recreating or addressing 'the past' - recent or distant, actual or imagined - have been a mainstay of British cinema since the silent era. From Elizabeth to Carry On Up The Khyber, and from the heritage-film debate to issues of authenticity and questions of genre, British Historical Cinema explores the ways in which British films have represented the past on screen, the issues they raise and the debates they have provoked. Discussing films from biopics to literary adaptations, and from depictions of Britain's colonial past to the re-imagining of recent decades in retro films such as Velvet Goldmine, a range of contributors ask whose history is being represented, from whose perspective, and why.

Films recreating or addressing 'the past' - recent or distant, actual or imagined - have been a mainstay of British cinema since the silent era. From Elizabeth to Carry On Up The Khyber, and from the heritage-film debate to issues of authenticity and questions of genre, British Historical Cinema explores the ways in which British films have represented the past on screen, the issues they raise and the debates they have provoked. Discussing films from biopics to literary adaptations, and from depictions of Britain's colonial past to the re-imagining of recent decades in retro films such as Velvet Goldmine, a range of contributors ask whose history is being represented, from whose perspective, and why.