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 [log in to unmask] ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html