British Women 's Cinema examines the place of female-centred films throughout British film history, from silent melodrama and 1940s costume dramas right up to the contemporary British chick flick .

British Women 's Cinema examines the place of female-centred films throughout British film history, from silent melodrama and 1940s costume dramas right up to the contemporary British chick flick .

Winner of the Theatre Library Association’s Richard Wall Memorial Award Special Jury Prize for an exemplary work in the field of recorded performance After the advent of sound, women in the British film industry formed an essential corps of below-the-line workers, laboring in positions from animation artist to negative cutter to costume designer. Melanie Bell maps the work of these women decade-by-decade, examining their far-ranging economic and creative contributions against the backdrop of the discrimination that constrained their careers. Her use of oral histories and trade union records presents a vivid counter-narrative to film history, one that focuses not only on women in a male-dominated business, but on the innumerable types of physical and emotional labor required to make a motion picture. Bell's feminist analysis looks at women's jobs in film at important historical junctures while situating the work in the context of changing expectations around women and gender roles.Illuminating and astute, Movie Workers is a first-of-its-kind examination of the unsung women whose invisible work brought British filmmaking to the screen.

Julie Christie's prickly relationship with stardom is legendary. This fascinating text provides a comprehensive account of Christie's career, from her emergence in the 1960s to present day. It moves from analysing her star persona, to exploring her performance and her politics, and in doing so raises important questions for the film industry.

Winner of the Theatre Library Association’s Richard Wall Memorial Award Special Jury Prize for an exemplary work in the field of recorded performance After the advent of sound, women in the British film industry formed an essential corps of below-the-line workers, laboring in positions from animation artist to negative cutter to costume designer. Melanie Bell maps the work of these women decade-by-decade, examining their far-ranging economic and creative contributions against the backdrop of the discrimination that constrained their careers. Her use of oral histories and trade union records presents a vivid counter-narrative to film history, one that focuses not only on women in a male-dominated business, but on the innumerable types of physical and emotional labor required to make a motion picture. Bell's feminist analysis looks at women's jobs in film at important historical junctures while situating the work in the context of changing expectations around women and gender roles.Illuminating and astute, Movie Workers is a first-of-its-kind examination of the unsung women whose invisible work brought British filmmaking to the screen.