Le « Journal of Popular British Cinema » est une revue annuelle de la nouvelle Société pour l’Etude du Cinéma populaire Britannique (Society for the Sutdy of Popular British Cinema – SSPBC). Cinq numéros sont sortis entre 1998 et 2002. Cette excellente revue d’universitaires nous livrait dès le premier numéro des articles sur des sujets aussi divers que l’homosexualité dans la la série « Carry On! » (célèbre série comique composée de 29 films au goût pour le coup très populaire!), le film policier britannique après la seconde guerre mondiale, les films punk, la musique dans les films Hammer, la comédie et la sexualité dans les films du « swinging london »…
Nous l’avons déjà signalé sur ce site, les Britanniques ne sont pas tendres avec leur propre cinéma, et son versant populaire était peu ou prou étudié jusqu’à récemment. Cette revue a marqué un pas important dans la reconnaissance intellectuelle du cinéma populaire britannique.
Le journal a ressuscité en 2004 sous le nom du « The Journal of British Cinema and Television ».
Voici le sommaire de cinq tomes devenus depuis collector :
Burton, Alan, and Julian Petley (eds): Journal of Popular British Cinema. Volume 1: Genre and British Cinema. 1998. 1st edn, 1st ptg. PB. ISBN:1862360162. This issue includes contributions on: music in Hammer horror films; the gay fool of the Carry On films; sexploitation; Second World War films; « swinging London » films; punk films; the postwar crime film; Lance Comfort and melodrama; general overviews of genre, British cinema and the « popular »; book and video reviews; and an interview with Christopher Wicking.
Kuhn, Annette, and Sarah Street (eds): Journal of Popular British Cinema. Volume 2: Audiences and Reception in Britain. 1999. 1st edn, 1st ptg. PB. ISBN:1862360170. This issue includes contributions on: the heritage film; the popularity of stars and memories of cinema-going in the 1930s; showmanship and promotional activities; audience tastes in the 1950s; female viewers’ reactions to Basic Instinct; Hollywood musicals and 1950s Liverpool; audiences in the 1920s and 1930s; and reports, archivists’ accounts, and book and video reviews.
Conrich, Ian, and Julian Petley (eds): Journal of Popular British Cinema. Volume 3: Forbidden British Cinema. 2000. 1st edn, 1st ptg. PB. ISBN:1862360189. This issue includes contributions on: the creation of the British Board of Film Censors; the R18 certificate; Ivor Montagu’s confrontation with British film censorship; film censorship in the Dominions; the advent of the ‘X’ certificate; the BBFC and Cape Fear (1962); the British press and films about Ireland; British pornographic films on the Internet; as well as reports, an interview with Derek Hill, and book reviews. « This unusually relevant and accessible academic periodical…makes for illuminating but alarming reading » – Time Out
Chapman, James, and Christine Geraghty (eds): Journal of Popular British Cinema. Volume 4: British Film Culture and Criticism. 2001. 1st edn, 1st ptg. PB. ISBN:1862360197. This issue includes contributions on: The idea of British film culture; The hegemonic turn: film comedies in 1950s Britain; Two steps forward, one step back: cultural struggle in the British Film Institute; The histogram and the list: the director in British film criticism; Literary adaptations and cultural fantasies; Sequence and the archaeology of British film criticism; « What’s showing at the Gaumont? » Rethinking the study of British cinema in the 1950s; « The best teenage romp ever! » – Cliff Richard and the construction of a British teenage identity, 1959-63; Richard Mallett at the pictures: a critic in context; « Wonderful odds and wonderful sods »: an interview with Stanley Forman; book reviews.
Petley, Julian, and Duncan Petrie (eds): Journal of Popular British Cinema. Volume 5: New British Cinema. 2002. 1st edn, 1st ptg. PB. ISBN:1862360286. This issue includes contributions on: New Labour and the cinema: culture, politics and economics; Laissez-faire eats the soul: film funding in the UK; Another false dawn? The Film Consortium and the franchise scheme; From Brit-flicks to shit-flicks: the cost of public subsidy; « Changing of the guard »: Channel 4, FilmFour and film policy; British low-budget production and digital technology; New Welsh cinema as postcolonial critique?; Money, Macpherson and mind-set: the competing cultural and commercial demands on Black and Asian British films in the 1990s; Traducing realisms: Naked and Nil By Mouth; « Living in a world that did not want them »: Michael Winterbottom and the unpopular British cinema; Patrick Keiller: an interview; From dancing queen to plaster virgin: Elizabeth and the end of English heritage?; Book reviews.
