ABSTRACT
Although Truffaut argued that ‘cinema’ and ‘British film’ are a contradiction in terms, there is a considerable history of cultural debate about the artistic potential of British film and some evidence of practical application. Much of British cinema has been inflected with a realist/naturalist style, but there is also an aesthetic tradition which has explored film as a medium capable of conveying complex states of mind with a rich formal apparatus at its disposal, and as a means of political critique. Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway and Sally Potter naturally spring to mind in connection with modernism/postmodernism and British cinema, but their work in the 1970s was not the first example of British interest in non-narrative experimental art cinema. As early as 1914, Duncan Grant created Abstract Kinetic Painting with Collage, a scroll painting which ‘came to life’ when viewed through a light-box at a particular speed to match the tempo of a piece by Bach. Grant is representative of early experimentation with film as ‘visual music’ and the majority of artists saw the creative development of the medium to lie in this direction rather than in story-telling/narrative structure (see Wollen, 1994:5).
