Dear Screen-L:


The British Film Institute  is pleased to announce the publication of:

A History of Artists' Film and Video in Britain, 1897-2004

_David Curtis_ is Senior Research Fellow at the 
AHRB British Artists' Film & Video Study 
Collection, Central Saint Martins, University of 
the Arts London. From 1977 to 2000 he was 
responsible for artists' film at the Arts Council 
of Great Britain. In 2003-2004 he curated Tate 
Britain's largest-ever show of artists' film and 
video, _A Century of Artists' Film in Britain_. 
He was involved in the London Filmmakers' Co-op 
in the late 1960s and ran the cinema at both the 
Drury Lane and Robert Street (IRAT) Arts 
Laboratories. His book _Experimental Cinema_ 
(1970) was one of the first books to survey the 
international film avant-garde.


http://go.ucpress.edu/CurtisHistory


In recent years the use of film and video by 
British artists has come to widespread public 
attention. Jeremy Deller, Douglas Gordon, Steve 
McQueen and Gillian Wearing all won the Turner 
Prize (in 2004, 1996, 1999 and 1997, 
respectively) for work made on video. This 
fin-de-siécle explosion of activity represents 
the culmination of a long history of work by less 
well-known artists and experimental filmmakers.
Ever since the invention of film in the 1890s, 
artists have been attracted to the possibilities 
of working with moving images, whether in pursuit 
of visual poetry, the exploration of the art 
form's technical challenges, the hope of 
political impact, or the desire to reinvigorate 
such time-honored subjects as portraiture and 
landscape. Their work represents an alternative 
history to that of commercial cinema in Britain-a 
tradition that has been only intermittently 
written about until now.


British Film Institute books are distributed in 
North America and Asia by the University of 
California Press.

Full information about the bookis available 
online: http://go.ucpress.edu/CurtisHistory


-- 
Lolita Guevarra
Electronic Marketing Coordinator
University of California Press
Tel. 510.643.4738 | Fax 510.643.7127
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