STAFFORD ARTS SOCIETY STUDY DAY THURSDAY 1ST OCTOBER - FILM AND CINEMA

The next Stafford Arts Society Study Day will be on film and will be held as usual at the Wedgwood Visitor Centre.

Lecture 1 - The Wartime Films of Britain and Hollywood

World War II saw film audiences on both side of the Atlantic at their all-time peak. In times of loss and deprivation, people needed films as much as they needed air raid shelters and blackout curtains, and the British and American film industries rose to the occasion. It was the era of romantic movies like Brief Encounter, of escapist musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis, of pro-British films like Mrs Miniver. Stiff Upper Lip Britons and flag-waving patriotic Americans contributed equally to these golden years of film.

Lecture 2 - Hollywood in the 30s

If any decade could be called The Golden Age of Hollywood, it was the 1930s. Its start coincided with the last of the silent films, but its end saw the apogee of the studio film - Gone with the Wind. In between came the establishment of the great stars and the famous names of the Hollywood studios American films colonised the world. There was little shooting outside the enclosed walls of the studio lot, but the list of classic films that decade produced is unending - Top Hat, Robin Hood and Snow White……..

Lecture 3 - Sixty Years on: Life in Britain as seen in 1960s films

There are four elements to the lecture. The first is a look at the emergence of the North in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Room at the Top etc.

Second will be a look at Swinging Britain, Michael Caine in Alfie, the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night. Third will a look at the last days of Empire as seen in Tony Richardson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, Zulu and, comically Carry On Up the Khyber. Finally the drastic the change in the depiction of sex from Dirk Bogarde in Victim (1961) to Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Women in Love (1969).

Colin Shindler has been lecturing on American and British social history for over 30 years since being awarded a PhD at Cambridge, where he lectured on film for their history faculty between 1998 and 2019.

Between 1975 and 1999 he pursued a wide ranging career as a writer and producer in TV radio and film, winning a BAFTA for his production of A Little Princess and chosing the theme tune for Juliet Bravo!

Radio plays for Radio 4 include, How to be an internee (about P G Woodhouse) and one as Private Eye & the Profumo Affair.

ANY QUERIES PLEASE CONTACT, LESLEY BRANDON, STUDY DAY ORGANISER...

lesleybrandon@icloud.com

07817 673606

There are two lunch choices:

Soup, sandwiches and fries plus tea or coffee - £9.50

Soup, onion bhaji and rosemary focaccia plus tea or coffee - £15

IF YOU WISH TO HAVE LUNCH ON THE DAY PLEASE PURCHASE A TICKET THAT INCLUDES A LUNCH OPTION.