Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'British national film movement'

Adaptation studies has recently turned an eye towards translation theory for valuable discussion on the role of movie makers as translators. Such discussion notes the difficulties inherent in adapting a medium such as a book, a play, or even a theme park ride into film. These difficulties have interesting parallels to the translation of one language into another. Translation theory, in fact, can shed important light on the adaptation process. Intrinsic to translation theory is the dichotomy between domesticating translation and foreignizing translation, the two major styles of translation. Translation scholar Lawrence Venuti, the author of these two terms, argues that while the former is an "ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to receiving cultural values, bringing the author back home," the latter is "an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad" (15). Venuti suggests that foreignizing translations, ones that maintain distinct cultural difference within the translated target text, are more desirable and ultimately commit less violence on the source text and language. This paper analyzes the 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad, a British remake of a 1924 Hollywood film by the same name, for its elements of foreignizing translation. Producer Alexander Korda, acting as a kind of translator, made this film during the height of the British national film movement. Supported by this movement, and inspired by his own personal vendetta against Hollywood, Korda took an American blockbuster and re-vised it with distinctly British thematic elements. Because his ultimate audience was an American one, however, I argue that his film took an American source text, The Thief of Bagdad (1924), and foreignized it, hoping, in the process, to establish British cinema as a major player in the international film world.

The British Consumer Co-operative Movement was a pioneer of the industrial film. The Movement engaged with cinema from the late 1890s and film was used to promote its ideals and trade well into the twentieth century. Existing studies of Labour cinema in Britain have paid little attention to the film propaganda of Co-operators and this thesis challenges the historiography for being too concerned with a narrowly defined political activism and chronologically restricted to the decade 1929-1939. An examination of the cinema of Co-operation reveals a far broader engagement with film; both in terms of its role in promoting a moralistic form of distribution, which sought to replace Capitalism and the exploitative profit system; and in the Movement's notable achievements with film both before and after the pre-World War two decade. The thesis begins by considering the treatment of the Co-operative Movement by Labour historians, and demonstrates an equal diminishing of its role in workers' cultural and economic struggle as that characteristic of Labour film scholars. The historiographical analysis is succeeded by an examination of the culture of Co-operation, considering the Movement as an alternative and oppositional formation to the dominant society, and proceeds to survey some of the principal cultural and recreational activities and formations sponsored by Co-op Societies: education, drama, music, sport, holidays and the family. The historiographical and cultural analysis contextually informs the succeeding historical examination of the Co-operative Movement's engagement with film in the period 1896-1970. This work arises out of a close inspection of the primary evidence preserved in the wealth of literature put out by the Movement. The observations and conclusions presented here are significantly informed by a reading and analysis of the numerous Movement films, the majority of which have never been consulted by film scholars before, and have come to light and been preserved as a part of the research conducted for the thesis. A detailed critical filmography, presented as an appendix, supplements the thesis.

This thesis examines the creation, transmission and preservation of the idea of Britain as a 'maritime nation' on film from 1900 to 1960. By placing an analysis of maritime films' frequency, content and reception into the broader maritime sphere and the British film industry, this thesis explores how maritime symbols functioned to project national identity. Films are used as the major source to provide an evidential frame through which to assess the depth and functioning of maritime culture in mass culture. The thesis traces the origins of key concepts associated with a maritime identity to establish the configuration of maritime history in popular culture by 1900. It then examines the importance of maritime film production during the period 1900-1939; the representation of shipbuilding from the 1930s; maritime scenarios in Second World War film; maritime comedies; and post-war maritime films. It concludes by suggesting the reasons for the decline in the frequency of maritime film after 1960. The thesis argues first, that the relationship established in the Victorian period between the nation and the maritime sphere endured with remarkable strength. Only after 1960 was the contemporary element of this connection broken by a combination of the decline of the subject matter and by political and social change. The second argument is that to understand these films it is essential to consider them as a complete body of evidence as well as individual films in discrete time periods. By setting these films back into the tradition from which they came is it possible to understand how symbols of national identity became so embedded that they became unquestioned: the most powerful level at which such symbols operate.

This thesis considers the mythology connected to the maritime sphere and notions of British national identity and collective unity through the projection of the maritime in British film and television. Specifically, it traces the evolution of this myth through the period 1960-2012, a post-Imperialist era characterised by broad social, economic and political changes and internal divisions within the historic Union of Great Britain, demonstrating how British culture continually uses the past to comment on the present. The thesis argues that the maritime remains a vibrant cultural site of British national self-examination and re-examination despite the precipitous decline of both Empire and Royal Navy within this time period. The specific audio-visual properties of the filmic and televisual forms and their position as the most successful cultural industries of the 20th Century suggest themselves as vital components for interrogating national myth and projections of collective unity and the attendant challenges to these. Aligned to this is the manner in which critical reception continues to operate as an indigent of collective memory, morality and communality aligning itself as provision not only of positive cultural taste but also of a wider debate on the merits or de-merits of the specific components of myth and identity. Each text is situated within its specific historical and industrial context and a combination of primary sources, textual analysis and reception studies are unified to argue that both the texts themselves and their reception within critical discourse collectively negotiate the role that media cultures play in constructing and challenging notions of collective identity and myth. Finally, this thesis argues constructively, that the seemingly banal cultural symbols of national identity and mythology, far from being an irrelevance in a globalised age, remain amongst the most vital cultural, social, political and economic discourses of the age.

A critical analysis of the film Remember the Titans, released in 2000, shows a preoccupation with nation and national identity through race and football. Set in 1971, it follows the desegregation and integration of a high school football team in Virginia. The film articulates a revisionist racial reconciliation reading of the Civil War based on white suffering and subsequent redemption. At its core it is a story about the progress of race relations and racism, framed as interpersonal relationships and segregation, in the United States.

This thesis examines the role of national defence in British parliamentary politics between 1794 and 1812. It suggests that previous analyses of the late eighteenth-century political milieu insufficiently explore the impact of war on the structure of the state. Work by J.E. Cookson, Linda Colley, J.C.D. Clark, and Paul Langford depicts a decentralised state that had little direct involvement in developing a popular “British” patriotism. Here I argue that the threat of a potential French invasion during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France provoked a drive for centralisation. Nearly all the defence measures enacted during the period gave the government a much greater degree of control over British manpower and resources. The readiness of successive governments to involve large sections of the nation in the war effort through military service, financial contributions, and appeals to the British “spirit”, resulted in a much more inclusive sense of citizenship in which questions of national participation and political franchise were unlinked. National identity was also affected, and the focus on military defence of the British Isles influenced political attitudes towards the regular army. By 1810, however, the nation was disillusioned by the lengthy struggle with France. The result of lingering political weakness was that attention shifted from national defence onto domestic corruption and venality. The aftermath of the Irish Act of Union, too, demonstrated the limits of attempts to centralise the policy of the whole United Kingdom. Significantly, however, the debates over the relationship between the centre and the localities in the 1830s and 1840s, and the response to a new French invasion threat in the 1850s and 1860s, revived themes addressed during the 1790s and 1800s. The political reaction to the invasion threats between 1794 and 1812 ultimately had more in common with a Victorian state bureaucracy than an eighteenth-century ancien régime.

This thesis constitutes a sociological analysis of the establishment and operation of the Department of National Defence Relief Camp Scheme in British Columbia. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, unemployment reached unsurpassed levels, when the dependent Canadian economy could not export its primary resources. Faced with a fiscal crisis, the Canadian state was unable to support the dramatically increased number of destitute. The position of B.C. was particularly serious due to its economic dependence upon the export of raw resources. Thousands of single unemployed men who had been employed in resource industries, and for whom no adequate relief provisions were available, congregated on the west coast and became increasingly militant in their demands for 'work and wages'. The radicalization of this group was perceived as a threat that was beyond the capacity of usual state social control mechanisms. As a result, the Canadian state was obliged to undertake exceptional, repressive measures to contain these unemployed. This was accomplished through the Department of National Defence Relief Camp Scheme. Despite this extended state action, the dissident unemployed were not adequately suppressed, and the B.C. camps were characterized by a high level of militancy. The violent Regina Riot of July 1, 1935 served to break the momentum of the radical, single unemployed relief camp inmates. In 1936 the DND relief camp scheme was dismantled, and the single unemployed were dispersed. The DND relief camp scheme is examined in light of theories of the capitalist state and its role in society. It is concluded that the fiscal crisis of the 1930s rendered the Canadian state unable to mediate between the demands of the unemployed and the requirements of capital. The ensuing social crisis necessitated exceptional state coercion -- the Department of National Defence Relief Camp Scheme.
Arts, Faculty of
Anthropology, Department of
Graduate

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how politics was done at the level of the parliamentary constituencies at the time of the treaty of Amiens 1802-1803. This is achieved through two case studies of the elections in Middlesex and Nottingham, which are investigated as social practices. This thesis argues that understandings of masculinity and national identity, as well as questions about the nature of the constitution and citizen rights were central to participants in the extraparliamentary political process. Collective emotions were also highly important in the process of mobilising political support, and this thesis emphasises that participation in these elections was a collective effort; men and women from all levels of society were significant political actors. Moreover, this thesis demonstrates the importance of competences such as knowledge about the organisation of crowds and political violence in the performance of the election.

Movements of animals presumably reflect their changing needs and the changing availability of necessary resources. In cold climates, snakes often make long seasonal migrations between hibernacula and summer habitats, Finding suitably deep hibernacula with minimal delay could be critical. I hypothesized that such animals should have highly developed navigational ability. By contrast, snakes living in mild climates can hibernate in shallow sites and probably do not migrate; if so, they might be expected to show poorly developed orientation mechanisms!. The objectives of this study were to determine movement patterns and navigational ability of garter snakes (Thamnophis) living in a mild climate and compare them with a congeneric population known to be migratory. From 1986 - 1988 I examined, using mark-recapture, movement behaviour of two populations of garter snakes at Spectacle Lake Provincial Park (SLPP) on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, focusing on several components typically associated with migratory behaviour - distances travelled, population directionality, fidelity to seasonal sites, distinctness of seasonal habitats, and route directness. Thamnophis sirtalis, the common garter snake, is the most widely distributed North American snake species and high latitude populations are migratory. Thamnophis ordinoides, the northwestern garter snake, is restricted to the Pacific northwest and migratory behaviour has never been reported. Both species displayed combinations of traits clearly suggesting nonmigratory behaviour. These included short-distance (< 500 m), random movements, a lack of den fidelity, and variation in the maintenance of specific home ranges between successive years. Home ranges overlapped between individuals, averaged less than 0.3 ha measured over a single active season, and were not clearly distinct from denning areas. Although some directionality of movement was evident, it was likely related to foraging strategy and unlike the typical unidirectional movements undertaken by migrating snakes, Sexual and reproductive differences in any of these traits generally were not significant. The navigational abilities of a migratory population of T. sirtalis from Wood Buffalo National Park (WBNP) in northern Alberta were examined as were those of the nonmigratory populations of snakes from SLPP. Displacement studies were carried out during the active seasons of 1986 - 1988 to determine the level of orientational abilities present in each population and to examine potential orientation cues. Snakes were displaced from their home range and tested in an arena under a variety of conditions, The results demonstrated that T. sirtalis from both SLPP and WBNP possessed advanced navigational abilities. Advanced skills may be absent in T. ordinoides. Thamnophis sirtalis at both study sites demonstrated time-compensated solar orientation as determined by 6 hr phase-delayed tests. Pheromone trails produced by recently copulated females (but not unmated females) also provided an orientation guide for displaced WBNP males, but results from SLPP were less conclusive. Thamnophis ordinoides did not respond in a discernible way to either cue. Navigational skills thus vary relatively little between migrating and nonmigrating populations of the same species but may be poorly developed in completely nonmigratory species.
Graduate

This case study is the first comprehensive analysis of the German Democratic Republic’s activities in South Yemen, the only Marxist state in the Arab World and at times the closest and most loyal ally to the Soviet Union in the Middle East during the Cold War. The dissertation analyzes East German Foreign Policy as a case of Socialist state- and nation-building and in doing so produces one major hypotheses: The case of South Yemen may be considered both, an ‘exceptional case’ and the possible ‘ideal type’ of the ‘general’ of East German foreign policy and thus points to what the GDR’s foreign policy could have been, if it hadn’t been for the numerous restraints of East German foreign-policy-making. The author critically engages with the normative and empirical dimensions of the ‘Limits of Foreign Policy’ by including a constructivist perspective of foreign policy. Apart from the case study itself, the dissertation provides the reader with a thorough overview of forty years of East German foreign policy with a focus on the interests and influence of The Soviet Union as well as the first introduction and methodological approach to East Germany's foreign policy in the Middle East. The empirical side of the analysis rests on archival documents of the German Foreign Office, the German National Archive and the former Ministry of State Security of the GDR. These documents are reviewed and published for the first time and are complemented by personal interviews with contemporary witnesses. The interdisciplinary approach integrates and expands methods of both History and Political Science, applicable to other cases. Conducted research is intended to contribute to academic discourse on South Yemen’s unique history, divided Germany’s role in the Cold War, East German foreign policy, but also the long-term impact of Socialist foreign-policy-making in the Global South which so far has been neglected almost completely in academia.
Graduate
miriam.mueller@fu-berlin.de