This class is a survey of some important British films of the last twenty-five years, organized around the ideas of heritage and counter-heritage.  A number of the most successful British films of this period, particularly in the international markets, have been works of so-called "heritage" culture.  These kinds of film, with which the production team of Merchant and Ivory is most closely associated, and which have been embraced by conservative and labour governments alike as offering a positive national image to the world, are often treated derisively by film critics.  Yet the nationalist agenda of such works is rarely as simple as it is assumed to be, and we will try in this class to read them as more than mere foils for "serious" films.  Most of our semester, however, will be spent in the study of films that, one way or another, attempt more boldly to reimagine cultural heritage and national identity in contemporary Britain.  These works of "counter-heritage" range from black British interventions of Hanif Kureishi and Stephen Frears or Gurinder Chadha to the recent films of working-class realist Mike Leigh and the feminist Sally Potter.  In discussing these films, our points of emphasis will often be as much political and sociological as aesthetic.  The Thatcher years (1979-1990) represent a period of extreme political reaction, nationalistic jingoism, and drastic cuts in state sponsorship of the arts.  And yet this is the very period of putative rebirth and rejuvenation of British cinema.  We will attempt to understand the relationship between the significant social, economic, and political upheavals of this period and the emergence of new cinematic styles, projects, and systems of production.  We will consider such topics as the role of television in funding much of the most respected work of the eighties; the rise of film festivals in the U.K.; the emergence of black and women filmmakers; and the changing relationship between the British film industry, American distributors, and international audiences.  We will trace these developments onwards through the nineties, from the immediate aftermath of the Thatcher era to the hegemony of New Labour.  And we will try to do some justice to the specificity of film as an art form and to the particular qualities of each of the works we view together.

Each student will work on a single sustained piece of scholarly research throughout the semester, culminating in a 20-page essay.  I will help you get started on your research, refine a thesis, and draft and revise your essay.  This will be a chance for you to really learn a lot about a film or director or actor or other topic that you care about, and to produce a solid, finished piece of scholarship.

There will also be five or six unannounced exams, covering not only the films that have been screened but also the reading assignments and lectures.