FIRES WERE STARTED

Fires Were Started is a provocative analysis of the responses of British film to the political ideology and policies of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher, representing an original and stimulating contribution to our knowledge of British cinema. This second edition includes revised and updated contributions from some of the leading scholars of British cinema, including Thomas Elsaesser, Peter Wollen and Manthia Diawara. The book discusses prominent filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Ken Russell, Nicolas Roeg and Stephen Frears; it also explores some lesser known but equally important territory such as the work of Black British filmmakers, the Leeds Animation Workshop and Channel 4’s Film on Four. Films discussed include Distant Voices, Still Lives, My Beautiful Launderette, Chariots of Fire and Drowning by Numbers.

January 2006
256 pages

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Lester Friedman is Scholar-in-Residence for the Media and Society Program at Hobart William Smith Collage. Previous publications include The Jewish Image in American Film (1987), Unspeakable Images: Multiculturalism in American Cinema (1991), and Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1999).

praise for the first edition:

'Lester Friedman's new book will probably remain the definitive statement on the Thatcherite period in film production ... Recommended for both the general reader or as a key text in a course covering the films of the period. Fires Were Started is an excellent anthology graced with significant contributions from a gifted gallery of critical voices.'
– Wheeler Winston Dixon, Cineaste

'Fires Were Started, a superb new anthology edited by Lester Friedman, offers 16 original, lucid and stimulating attempts to examine the pieces of the puzzle. The insight, thoroughness, and eloquence with which virtually every contributor approaches his or her topic makes the book a cornucopia of diverse methodologies for relating films to their social and political context.'
– Matthew Bernstein, Film Quarterly

'Fires Were Started covers much of the ground of the British cinema in the 1980s, and does so generally intelligently and solidly.'
– Paul Coates, Social Discourse

'Some of the book's strongest sections are those which are unexpected, moving us away from the well-trodden paths of draughtsmen and ploughmen and the sound of chariots.'
– Janet Sillars, Screen

praise for the second edition:

'Those familiar with the first edition of this wide-ranging volume will welcome this expanded compilation of leftist critical essays on the fate of filmmaking during a conservative age ... Recommended.'
– Choice