Film and Repertory Cinema in London from Punk to Brit Pop, 1976-1994

Abstract

My research aims to examine the changing patterns of film exhibition and consumption among specific audiences in order to explore and define where possible the range of factors involved in such changes. The study will contribute to film exhibition histories and debates about the development of the film canon, alternative canons and the role of ‘tastemakers’. London repertory cinemas and their audiences between 1976 and 1994 provide a focus for my discussion of the multiple contributory factors from economic issues, urban planning (including neighbourhood development, gentrification, and regeneration) and arts policy to technological change, changing patterns of film distribution and marketing, programming strategies, consumption communities and the particular experience of repertory cinema screening and viewing. My research uses Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital and Sara Thornton’s notions of subcultural capital to analyse specific audience formations in relation to specific cinemas, neighbourhoods and programmes. The research therefore requires a range of strategies from historical and archival study to personal recollections from audiences in online communities. The printed schedules, distributed to promote the repertory cinemas, provide a central source of data about what the cinemas were screening, how they presented their screenings and framed the experiences of cinemagoers. The aim of the methods deployed are to uncover grounded understandings of repertory, art house and cult cinema. The methodology is historical and contextual, using existing case studies of localised audiences such as the archival and ethnographic studies of Jancovich, Faire and Stubbings’s 2003 investigation ‘The Place of the Audience’. The research utilises existing analyses of film distribution, exhibition and consumption from film industry, academic, statutory bodies and local history sources and provides new qualitative and quantitative analyses of contemporary promotional material such as cinema programmes

Date of Award	1 Jul 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Mark Betz (Supervisor) & Michele Pierson (Supervisor)