Alan Clarke (Television)

Description

"The British television director Alan Clarke is often associated with the visceral social realism of his banned borstal play Scum and his football hooligan study The Firm, but this book demonstrates that his work was more wide-ranging and poetic than his violent reputation suggests. Alongside his well-known productions, it studies such radical work as the mythic fantasy Penda's Fen and the influential terrorist short Elephant." "With detailed research and analysis, this book discusses many of his productions, from his early theatre career through to his development within the 'studio system' of provocative television play strands of the 1960s and 1970s, and his increasingly personal work in the 1980s, which made him one of Britain's greatest directors." "In the process of discussing Clarke's work, this book raises crucial issues for students and lecturers in television and film studies, including aesthetics, authorship, censorship, the convergence of film and television, drama-documentary form, narrative and realism. This book attends to techniques of television direction and proposes new methodologies in its querying of the critical neglect of directors in what is often described as a writer's medium."--Jacket.

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