ABSTRACT
The last chapter examined the links between modernism and British cinema until 1970. Since then there have been considerable developments in avantgarde, experimental mainstream and art cinema, encouraged by new structures of funding and distribution and by the convergence of film practice and theoretical concepts including structuralism, feminism and postmodernism. In relation to these developments this chapter will examine the final phases of experimental activity briefly outlined in the previous chapter, beginning with oppositional ‘counter-cinema’ and going on to deal with subsequent independent film-makers. The central idea underpinning many of these narratives was formal experimentation. But there was also a concern to present a range of oppositional narratives that could be said to question dominant images of the nation. As observed by Homi Bhabha, these work to ‘continually evoke and erase its totalising boundaries – both actual and conceptual’ (Bhabha, 1990: 330).
