Bryanston Films : An Experiment in Cooperative Independent Production and Distribution

By the end of the 1950s, independent film producers in Britain were facing an increasingly difficult challenge in sustaining their businesses. They were dependent on the major distribution companies for finance, but the combines that had long dominated the British film industry-the Rank Organisation and the Associated British Picture Corporation-had drastically reduced their production commitments, preferring to concentre on less risky aspects of their operations, notably exhibition and other leisure activities. Independent producers were therefore forced to find new ways to operate and as the new decade began one notable example of this was the formation of new collaborative enterprises to provide greater integration between production and distribution. One of the first and most significant examples of this was Bryanston Films, established by Maxwell Setton and Michael Balcon in 1959 and involving an array of distinguished directors, producers and other industry figures. Over a period of five years, Bryanston was responsible for the production and distribution of some 33 films, released through their association with British Lion. This article examines the formation, subsequent development and eventual decline and failure of this significant experiment in collaborative independent production and distribution. Drawing on the Michael Balcon papers held at the British Film Institute and the files of the completion guarantee company, Film Finances, the article examines Bryanston’s financial successes and failures, shedding light on some of the key players and projects in the Bryanston story and providing insight into the wider operations-including collaboration with a number of other companies. It will also touch on the wider opportunities and challenges facing independent production and distribution in a rapidly changing British film market during the early part of the 1960s

Making movies : the structuring of creativity in contemporary British cinema.

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'It's a film' : medium specificity as textual gesture in Red road and The unloved

British cinema has long been intertwined with television. The buzzwords of the transition to digital media, 'convergence' and 'multi-platform delivery', have particular histories in the British context which can be grasped only through an understanding of the cultural, historical and institutional peculiarities of the British film and television industries. Central to this understanding must be two comparisons: first, the relative stability of television in the duopoly period (at its core, the licence-funded BBC) in contrast to the repeated boom and bust of the many different financial/industrial combinations which have comprised the film industry; and second, the cultural and historical connotations of 'film' and 'television'. All readers of this journal will be familiar – possibly over-familiar – with the notion that 'British cinema is alive and well and living on television'. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, when 'the end of medium specificity' is much trumpeted, it might be useful to return to the historical imbrication of British film and television, to explore both the possibility that medium specificity may be more nationally specific than much contemporary theorisation suggests, and to consider some of the relationships between film and television manifest at a textual level in two recent films, Red Road (2006) and The Unloved (2009)

Isolated Figures in a Remote Scottish Landscape:Place and Identity in the Films of Scott Graham

The relationship between place and identity has had a very specific significance in the development of Scottish cinema. Until the 1980s Scotland tended to be depicted as an essentially rural and remote, a fantasy space characterised within the interlinked representational discourses of tartanry and kailyard by romantic and picturesque highland and island locations or parochial and backward villages and small towns. With the emergence of a New Scottish cinema in the 1990s, this was subsequently replaced by a focus on more realist narratives located in the urban centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh. In this essay, I will explore the work of Scott Graham, whose three features to date - Shell, Iona and Run – have provided a renewed engagement with a contemporary Scotland that (re)incorporates both the highland and island landscapes that provided the backdrop to the romantic tradition of tartanry, and the small-town setting familiar from the kailyard tradition. These settings are central to the identity and predicament of Graham’s protagonists, who are struggling with a sense of isolation, loneliness or lack of connection, alienated from place, community and even family. Consequently, Graham provides evidence for the continuing relevance of a distinctive Scottish cinematic tradition

Community perspectives of mathematics and statistics support in higher education: The role of the staff member

Mathematics support now forms a widely accepted and important part of the provision of higher education institutions within the UK and Ireland to assist students within their learning of mathematics and statistics, particularly as they make the transition to university study. Over the last 15 years it has seen growth as an area of scholarship, and behind this has been the role of those staff members who oversee, develop, deliver and research mathematics support within their institutions. To date, however, there has been little work that explores the roles, opportunities and recognition afforded to such individuals, but this is important if visibility for mathematics support as part of the provision and practice of higher education institutions is to continue to grow and a sustainable community of practitioners is to be established. Here we report on a survey of 51 individuals with responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the mathematics and statistics support provision within their institutions. Findings show that the majority of staff with such responsibility for the delivery of mathematics support within institutions are in permanent roles and that in many instances this forms the sole focus of their employment; there also exists an important and visible role for postgraduates in the delivery of mathematics support. Finally, there is evidence that most staff working in this area feel recognised and well supported with opportunities to develop their roles, engage with professional development, and to contribute to a national community of practice