Celluloid War Memorials

The British Instructional Films Company and the Memory of the Great War

By: Mark Connelly

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Hardcover | 22 December 2016 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
339 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
16.4 x 24.2 x 3.3

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The book is a study of the British Instructional Film company and its production of war re-enactments and documentaries during the mid to late 1920s. It is both a work of cinema history and a study of the public's memory of World War One. These films, made in the decade following the end of the war, helped to shape the way in which that war was remembered. It seeks to understand the company's films historically within the context of the wider culture of remembrance and interpretation circulating at the time of their release, and to interrogate how far the films both contribute to, and reflect the ways that the war was understood in the immediate post-war moment. It illustrates that the films are micro-histories revealing huge amounts about perceptions of the Great War, national and imperial identities, the role of cinema as a shaper of attitudes and identities, power relations between Britain and the USA and the nature of popular culture as an international contest in its own right. The British film industry was in the doldrums by the early twenties, unable to cope with the power of Hollywood. In an atmosphere of increasing doubt it began to request state aid to guarantee its survival, which eventually arrived through the introduction of protectionism. The 1927 Cinematograph Films Act (popularly known as the Quota Act) insisted that a certain number of films exhibited in British cinemas each year had to be of domestic production. But the Act was not the sole savior of British cinema. Rather, the government intervention allowed the domestic industry to exploit the talents of an emerging group of younger filmmakers including Michael Balcon, Water Summers and Alfred Hitchcock, who directed the most influential of these BIF war constructions.

Industry Reviews

Celluloid War Memorials covers a fascinating subject and Professor Connelly reveals interesting and thought-provoking ideas about how the past - even the immediate past - is remembered and memorialised by individuals and society.
Kathy Stevenson, The Western Front Association Stand To!, Number 11, May 2018

-- Kathy Stevenson * The Western Front Association Stand To! *

This is a convincing and important contribution to the field . . . this promises to provide a depth to our understanding of the history and tradition of documentary in British film production at this time. I look forward to reading it when it comes out.
Mark Connelly's Celluloid War Memorials is an indispensable addition to the field of British Film History and to Film Studies and History more broadly. The book is a landmark study of a British production company. But more than that, Connelly has written a book which productively connects industry, audience and cultural memory, and in the process provides an important piece of the puzzle that is the ever changing cultural memory of the Great War in Britain.'
Michael Hammond, Department of Film Studies, University of Southampton

-- Michael Hammond

BIF [British Instructional Films] and their WW1 [World War 1] films have received little attention by scholars, despite their box office success and critical acclaim at the time of their release... the role of the films as a 'surrogate language' for veterans is particularly interesting and productive, as is the argument that the films might be understood as 'celluloid war memorials'. The intention to concentrate on contexts of reception is particularly interesting in this regard and promises to offer a fresh insight into the productions.
Another major strength is the emphasis it places on the circulation of the films outside Britain itself, within the Empire and further afield. This really is original and has the potential to result in some ground-breaking work.'
Lawrence Napper, Film Studies Department, King's College London

-- Lawrence Napper

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