The Performing Arts on Film & Television
Balletomines (1954)
A catalogue of film and video materials held by the archives and collections of BFI, Arts Council England, LUX, Central St Martins British Artists Film & Video Study Collection.
About the catalogue
The Performing Arts on Film & Television Catalogue was commissioned by MI:LL (Moving Image: Legacy and Learning), an Arts Council England initiative to support projects and develop strategies that promote engagement with the arts through the moving image.
Intended for use by programmers, curators, researchers, students, performers, practitioners, artists and filmmakers, this catalogue gives an account of the histories of theatre, acting, dance, music, performance art and oratory (from politics to poetry) on film and television, through referencing around 3,500 titles selected from the combined collections of the BFI, Arts Council England, Central St Martins British Artists Film & Video Study Collection and LUX.
The film and television collections of these archives include titles from the very beginnings of cinema (1895) through to recent works and shows the richness and particularity of the different collections, each of which preserves a distinct area of moving image culture and has its own relationship to performance, and which together add up to an extraordinary cultural resource.
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Introduction
A full introduction to The Performing Arts on Film and Television Catalogue.
How to Access Films
The contact details for the sources, along with some general information about each organisation.
British Music Hall and Variety on Film 1895 - 1930
Early British film, documenting stage performances, actualities and thematic comedies or dramas made for cinema.
Theatre
Adaptations of plays for cinema and television, from the Greek Classics to contemporary British drama, via Shakespeare and 20th Century European and American playwrights.
Dance
From early cinema records to experimental television commissions, a wide range of classical, modern, post-modern, contemporary, popular and folk dance caught by and made for the camera.
Music
From early silent cinema with live music accompaniment, through a wide range of musical genres, instruments, composers and performers.
Performance Art and Artists' Film & Video
The contexts, communities, filmmakers and performers that constituted an artistic Avant Garde of the 20th century.
From Politics to Poetry
The social role of performance through political oratory and public protest; poetry as spoken word performance.
Cinema Acting Styles
Performance styles coming out of music hall and theatre that have contributed to the evolution of cinema.
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Download The Performing Arts on Film & Television (PDF, 7MB)
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- The catalogue is indexed using PDF bookmarks - ensure these are being viewed in your PDF reading software
- The table of Contents on page 3 and the Full Contents at the end of the document provide hyperlinks to chapters, people and individual works
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