Fires Were Started is a provocative analysis of the responses of British film to the policies and political ideology of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and it represents 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 discuss 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.

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).

September 2006
256 pages
978-1–904764–71–7    £16.99 (pbk)
978-1–904764–72–4    £45.00 (hbk)

view contents

chapter samples
preface
introduction

praise for first edition
'Lester Friedman's new book will probably remain the definitive statement on the Thatcherite period in film production. In all cases, the essays are lucidly argued, and the list of films and critical texts examined quite literally exhaustive. The volume affords even the most casual reader a comprehensive look at one of the most interesting areas in recent cinematic practice and is 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. Virtually all these authors provide insights that extend beyond their specific topics. These thought-provoking essays add up to a stimulating textbook and a major resource for future discussions.'
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

second edition reviews

'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. Thatcher rode to power on a rising tide of reaction to Labour’s ‘welfare state’, which she derided as the ‘nanny state’. In addition to some revisions in the original text, Friedman has added several new essays: a study of gender as a factor in filmmaking and films by Deborah Tudor; a discussion of leftist television that challenged Thatcher’s notion that there was ‘no such thing as society’, only ‘people’, an idea so compellingly challenged in one television series that it was hastily rerun in its entirety; a study of Ken Loach’s working-class docudramas; and a probing discussion of disorientation in British life in the Thatcher years, as seen in the emotive work of Mike Leigh. Germane bibliographies of varying lengths accompany, and most also include feature stills (which are uncommonly well–chosen)...Recommended.'

Choice Magazine, August 2007

books of related interest
The Cinema of Britain and Ireland
British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit
The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art in the Service of the People
The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real
Contemporary British and Irish Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide