Pam Cook
Pam Cook, Professor Emerita at Southampton University, on the challenges thrown up in the course of her research on cinema history and identity:
"My 1996 book Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema explored the contribution of dress to creating a Europeanised aesthetic in popular period dramas made by Gainsborough Pictures in the 1940s. This led to an edited collection about Gainsborough studio from the 1920s to 1950 that emphasised its key role in the development of British film culture. My interest in the transnational nature of British cinema, particularly its links with continental Europe, fed into my BFI Film Classic on Powell and Pressburger's 1945 Scottish romance, I Know Where I'm Going!. This much-loved film is a traveller's tale, tracing the delays and digressions faced by a determined young woman, Joan Webster, on her way from Manchester to a remote Scottish island to marry her wealthy boss. Most of the Scottish locations were meticulously recreated at J Arthur Rank's Denham studios, but this has not deterred generations of fans from literally following in Joan Webster's footsteps, retracing her emotional journey into a spellbinding, mythic world. My research for the book led me into uncharted areas and I was confronted with some tricky dilemmas that had no simple solution. As a historian, I was faced with a number of challenges, not least how to write a history that would be appropriate to this magical, multilayered film.
“My current research on the work of Australian film-maker Baz Luhrmann has involved extensive investigation of archival sources in the UK and Australia, and interviews with Luhrmann and his chief collaborator Catherine Martin at their Sydney production base. As with I Know Where I'm Going!, my research led me to change my initial approach to my topic.”
Pam Cook is Professor Emerita in Film at Southampton University. She has been writing on cinema history since 1975, and her publications span areas including gender, national identity and visual design. She is editor of the key film studies work The Cinema Book, now in its 3rd edition.
Read Pam Cook's full Researcher's Tale presentation hosted at the BFI National Library, 10 December 2007.
Professor Cook's publications include:
- Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema (BFI, 1996)
- Gainsborough Pictures (Cassell, 1997) [ed.]
- I Know Where I'm Going! (BFI, 2002)
- Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema (Routledge, 2005)
- 'An American in Paris' in Mandy Merck [ed.], America First: Naming the Nation in US Film (Routledge, 2007)
- The Cinema Book, 3rd edition (BFI, 2007) [ed.]
