WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/westminsterresearch History, landscape, nation: British independent film and video in the 1970s and 1980s Perry, C. This is an author's accepted manuscript of an article published in the Moving Image Review and Art Journal 6 (1-2), pp. 14-37, 2017. The final definitive version is available online at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1386/miraj.6.1-2.24_1 The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail
[email protected] 1 History, landscape, nation: British independent film and video in the 1970s and 1980s Colin Perry Central Saint Martins ABSTRACT This article examines uses of history in British independent film and video in the 1970s and 1980s, looking at ways in which radical pasts were called on to foster struggle in the present. In tracing the specific influence of New Left cultural historians on independent film and video, as well as television, during these two decades, this paper also suggests ways in which the nation is figured, contested and re-drawn in specific works by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, Phil Mulloy and Black Audio Film Collective. A rich and diverse framework of Left historical discourse is outlined, suggesting that the exploration of a socialised landscape (the city as well as the country) played on and renegotiated existing myths and tropes of Britishness, identity and belonging.