Dossier |
Scottish cinema: introduction
Professor of Film at the University of Auckland. His books include Contemporary Scottish Fictions (Edinburgh University Press, 2004), Screening Scotland (BFI, 2000), The British Cinematographer (BFI, 1996) and Creativity and Constraint in the British Film Industry (Macmillan, 1991)
The enhanced profile of Scottish film over the last decade has provided a greater impetus for scholarly engagement in a field dominated until recently by Colin McArthur's radical critique of the cinematic representations of Scotland as defined in relation to the monolithic and regressive discourses of Tartanry, Kailyard.and Clydesideism. An alternative line of analysis has subsequently emerged in the work of cultural critics such as Cairns Craig and Angus Calder who mobilize respectively the Bakhtininan concepts of heteroglossia and the Carnival to posit a richer and more positive conceptualisation of tradition, myth and practice in the making and remaking of Scottish cultural identity. This line of thinking also informs Duncan Petrie's reassessment of the historical legacy of cinematic representations of Scotland and his identification of a vibrant New Scottish cinema that emerged in 1980s and 1990s. This dossier, featuring analyses of recent Scottish films by new critics, extends the debate: Jonny Murray foregrounds the American influence on Scottish cinema and culture; David Martin-Jones considers the ways in which devolutionary Scotland has functioned in relation to a damaged English identity; Ian Goode focuses on questions of interiority, gender and memory; and Sarah Neely considers a distinctive Scottish contribution to the ‘heritage’ genre.