Into the Mainstream: Independent Film and Video Counterpublics and Television in Britain, 1974–1990

Title Into the Mainstream: Independent Film and Video Counterpublics and Television in Britain, 1974–1990 Type The sis URL https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/11999/ Dat e 2 0 1 6 Citation Perry, Colin (2016) Into the Mainstream: Independent Film and Video Counterpublics and Television in Britain, 1974– 1990. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London. Cr e a to rs Perry, Colin Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact [email protected] . License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author Into the Mainstream: Independent Film and Video Counterpublics and Television in Britain, 1974–1990 by Colin Perry A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of the Arts London June 2016 ii Abstract This thesis looks at independent film and video cultures in Britain from the mid- 1970s to late 1980s. It examines a period of time in which diverse radical film- and video-makers in Britain contributed towards struggles against capitalism, patriarchy, racism, colonialism and homophobia. New social models of film and video production and exhibition were developed, such as the film collective, and new alliances were built to campaign for changes to social policy and legislature. The study examines this moment in order to clarify the capacity for radical discourse to bring groups together and impact on dominant cultural forms such as television. The thesis explores the interrelation between public debate, institutions and individuals. It uses public sphere theories to examine alternative reading publics, and media such as film, video and television. It argues that independent film and video in Britain at this time, including activist documentary, currents of counter-cinema and avant-garde film, was largely concerned with creating and circulating counterpublic discourses. These counterpublic discourses consolidated and expanded oppositional groups, and set out to change aspects of society as a whole. The thesis gives an account of the diversity of the influences on independent film and video, from socialist and liberation movements, to popular radical histories and psychoanalytic and Marxist film theory. Attention is given to the Independent Filmmakers’ Association as an agent of change between filmmakers and state, notably in terms of national film and broadcasting policy. There is a case study of Marc Karlin’s television film For Memory (1986), which looks at the fate of socialist memory under televisual regimes; and a case study of Stuart Marshall’s Bright Eyes iii (1984), which looks at issues of sexuality, identity and counter-history during the AIDS crisis. The thesis argues that during this period, independent film- and video- makers helped to transform television into a vital site of counterpublic discourse. iv Contents Abstract iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Rhetorics of Persuasion, Desire, Experience and Counterpublics 19 The Contention and Reinvention of Documentary 26 Rhetorics of Persuasion and Pedagogy 39 Desire and Pleasure 50 Experience and CounterpuBlics 59 Conclusion 70 Chapter 2. Counter-history in British independent film and video 77 Counter-history and Political Modernist Historiography 84 Diggers and Levellers from the New Left to Bertolt Brecht 90 Counterdiscourses and Socialist-Feminism 101 National Pasts, Heritage, Ethnicities and Television 111 Conclusion 122 Chapter 3. Counterpublics in Britain, 1974-1990: The Independent Filmmakers’ Association 131 Whose Public? The IFA and the Annan Committee 134 Reading CounterpuBlics: The IFA Newsletter and Other PuBlications 146 Forming New Publics for Independent Film and Video 156 Representing the Nation: Regional PuBlics and State Funding 168 Collective Bodies and Reading PuBlics 174 Conclusion 181 Chapter 4. Counter-television: Marc Karlin’s For Memory 191 The Counter-Television Structure of For Memory 198 Testimonies, Witnesses, Holocaust 207 v The City and the Strange Museum 218 Constructing Embodied Historical Publics 229 Conclusion 235 Chapter 5. Bright Eyes: Bodies, Voices and Counterpublics 247 Part 1: Bodies and Discourses of Photography 252 AIDS and Sexuality in the Media 260 Constructing Sexuality and Counter-Histories 268 Part 2: The Witness as Campaigner 273 Signifying Practice and the Embodied Voice 281 Conclusion 297 Conclusion 305 Recommendation for Future Research 312 Limitations 311 Conclusion 314 Bibliography 316 vi Introduction This thesis argues that independent film and video in Britain between the mid-1970s and late-1980s sought to provoke societal change by creating and promoting counterpublic forms of cinema and television. Independent film and video was fundamentally rooted in social and political movements such as Marxism, the Women’s Liberation Movement, anti-racism, Gay Liberation and queer activism. It was concerned with imagining new liberatory forms of sociality, and promoting radical change at a national level through changing governmental policy and legislative precedents. Independent film- and video-makers undertook their struggles not only by creating individual films and videos, but also through the production and distribution of texts and publications, and in the founding of organisations to promote and distribute films and videos. In mapping out this context, this thesis asserts that the vitality of the period is contained within these rich eddies and flows of discourse, organisation and activism. The thesis sets out to overcome two main problems with existing accounts of independent film and video in Britain during this period. Firstly, independent films and videos have been routinely examined in film studies outside of the complexity of their original social and political contexts. Partly, this is an effect of the dominant Marxist-psychoanalytical film theories of the 1970s, which often pitted Althusserian theories of ideology against supposedly more naïve forms of Left activism (union militancy, romantic forms of collective practice) and discourse (socialist humanism, libertarianism).1 These film theories are also noteworthy for their focus on aesthetic (or textual) qualities of films, arguing that some categories of film (such as the 1 modernist film text) are progressive while others (such as the classic realist text) are regressive. Since the 1980s, there has been a turn towards studies of social contexts of film and video, for example in studies of early cinema, as well as audience studies in cinema and television. However, while there have been significant theoretical developments in film studies, discussions of independent film and video produced in the 1970s and 1980s have often remained focussed on the aesthetics of specific films or videos, rather than the specific cultural context of the period. Theories of affect in film studies, for example, have offered a rich analysis of canonical independent films and videos such as Handsworth Songs (1986, Black Audio Film Collective) in terms of a phenomenology of the embodied encounter between viewer and work (Marks, 2000), but they have not explored how the work was produced first within the context of British television (it was broadcast on Channel 4 – see my discussion of this in Chapter 2 of this thesis). While these theories are important in understanding specific cinematic encounters with individual works and the development of new intercultural forms of cinema, they do not examine these works as nodes within their original sociopolitical climates. Secondly, the turn towards contextual studies has had an impact on studies of independent film and video, but this has not resulted in any new significant theoretical account of the dynamics of the field. Marginal and diverse histories, first- person accounts and personal recollections have been recorded for posterity or recovered from the archives, revealing some of the diversity of approaches and politics of the period. Accounts such as Margaret Dickinson’s Rogue Reels and Julia Knight and Peter Thomas’s Reaching Audiences have provided vital overviews of independent film and video, situating the individuals and organisations within the sociopolitical context (Knight and Thomas, 2011; Dickinson, 1999). Other recent 2 accounts record memories and testimonies of those involved in independent practice, including reflections on collective filmmaking in the 1970s, or the (relatively) generous flows of funding to independent producers in the 1980s through the then-newly-established broadcaster Channel 4 (Aylett, 2015; Kidner and Bauer, 2013; Rowbotham and Beynon, 2000). These accounts do not, however, set out to provide a cogent theoretical analysis of why these makers and activists came together, or how these films, videos and discourses set out to produce sociopolitical change (for example, in terms of women’s rights at a cultural level, or in terms of governmental policy and legislation). If the various forms of film analysis since the 1970s (textual analysis, theories of affect and phenomenology) have tended to side- line the complex social conditions of the time in order to give a coherent theoretical position, the turn to context-analysis in film studies has generally failed to provide a cogent theoretical analysis of the sociopolitical dynamics of the field. Another significant explanation for this continued exclusion of the historical conditions of the period is that researchers and

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