Communications and Media

Today, The British Cinema can be unequivocally said to have come of age, for it is not only a major player in the contemporary movie industry, it is indeed one of the most respected in the industry across the globe. The reason behind its universal acceptance is not unconnected with the fact that it has come along way, for its history dates as far back as the nineteenth century. To be precise, Britain witnessed her first moving pictures in 1889, in London.  The brain behind this novelty was a British scientist named William Friese Greene, who secured a patent right on it in 1890. Since this occurrence, the British cinema has since witness diverse development, recording numerous productions of immense commercial success.

However, in the recent past, despite its phenomenal success spread over the years, the British cinema has witnessed arguments about its identity. Stake holders have begun to question the cultural inclination of British Cinema. Is it gradually becoming similar to Hollywood cinema or it has chosen to follow the path of European art Cinema This problem of identity question can only be satisfactorily answered by explicitly delving into a background analysis of these three cinema industries.
History of British Cinema
Since the advent of the first film in London, British cinema witnessed a rather complicated development, with diverse cultural movements developing independently. The industry weathered several booms and recessions due to diverse reasons. The recession was basically due to the increasing competition of the Hollywood. The very early British Cinemas had two major categories, which are non-fiction movies, called documentary and the fiction movies. The fictions were mainly based on moral and cultural issues. Before the World war, fictions were made popular but the advent of the war developed the popular documentary films, which films makers used extensively. The British film industry started churning out films using documentary techniques, which were designed to promote the profiles of the nations at war. These war-time films were used to highlight the effects of war on the people.
Post-War Period
The Postwar period simply continued to develop on the success recorded during the war, hitting another peak of creativity. During this period, British film achieved major international recognition, recording enormous success on films like The Red Shoes and Hamlet. Suddenly after this early post war period, in the 1950s to be precise, the British film industry started to focus on dramas about the World War and other famous comedies, concentrating more on the local audience. The films were usually based o true life stories and were not the based on the usual glamorous budget of the Hollywood movies. At this point, the British cinema became quite similar to the European Art cinema, producing series of satires on culture and life style in Britain. It was during this period that horror movie also started to crop up in the industry and before the end of 1950s, horror movies had become tremendously successful. By this time, the censorship rules had been made less strict.
New wave
Perhaps the new censorship rules and the change in British attitude towards materialism led to what can be called the New Wave era.  This was an era where British cinema witness a movement called the social realistic movement. The set of films produced during this period were based on individual struggles against social forces ( Hindmarsh J,1997). The industry started producing films that exposed the struggles of the working class in maintaining their identity in the increasing materialistic Britain. These films challenged the prejudice against the common man that gradually wanted to turn materialism into the common culture of all British Citizens. The noble efforts of the working class, which was continuously being ignored and gradually becoming seen as irrelevant by the upper class, was highlighted in the movies of this period, emphasizing on the importance of the noble acts of the noble workers.
Immediately after this period, British delved into films on issue that used to be taboo in Britain. These issues include things like homosexuality, abortion, rape etc. The styles of these films were romantic, creative, and special, for they created a new perspective to the diverse issues. With this new liberalism acquired in the British film industry, it became universally successful, with stories revolving around sex and nudity. One major hit was James Bond, a film particularly known for its peculiar style of soft violence that was married sexuality. The James Bond series was so famous that the British film industry soon moved towards spy films. Detectives and spy began playing protagonist role in the British films industry during this period. This spy plot became so famous that it attracted the even American producers. It was during this period that American producers infiltrated the British film industry, financing many of the British movies, one of these producers include Joseph Losey. However, before the end of the decade, traces of social realism was beginning to be observed in the British movie industry again.

By the year 1975, the British movie industry had sobered down and the horror films had come to an abrupt end. The films produced during this period tend to be inferior to that of Hollywood. The nudity was however not reduced. Pornographic films had the opportunity to take over from the horror, but the industry witnessed the worst recession ever during this period.
British cinema in the 1990 till date
The home market was low at this period, but received commercial success in the United States. The unexpected success achieved abroad led to a new set of British romantic comedies, which also achieved great success. The desire for British comedy films was rekindled leading to production of   The Full Monty in 1997. The film had a production budget of less than 5million but achieved a net profit of well over 25o million. Ever since this success till date, British films have since been continuously being on the global market and the local market too grown substantially.
The British film industry and Hollywood
Despite its phenomena global success, the British Films market can not be compared with the classical American Hollywood. The typical Hollywood was full of high cost blockbuster which British films can not compete with due to its relatively small market structure. Again, the British films all have a tangible amount of original traditional British culture proportions in them. Hollywood Films with American culture were uncommon and even the popular American cultural film, Star Wars had major UK locations.
However, the Hollywood films have had a great influence on British films, for Hollywood generates work for British films industry. Nevertheless, British film industry still maintains to produce cultural inclined films, with several British stories and histories embedded in them. The British film industry has continued to show a mixed attitude towards Hollywood because the Hollywood does not only seems to limits British culture, it also controls the distribution of British films and thus influence the profit of British films in the world market.  Hollywood films have their peculiar nature of over flogging issues like human will.
The Art cinema
The British Art cinema has been in existence since 1950s, it has a predominant style inclined towards arts and theatre. Works from this genre requires a level of intelligence to understand and were usually extensively discussed theoretically in a journal title Screen Education, a paper analysis of British art films. 
 The features of these films include low budget, limited audience and cultural inclined stories. However, with producers like Peter Greenaway introducing new innovations like computer accelerated images, the industry stated witnessing wider audience.
This genre has a peculiar visual style with quite distinctive narrative themes. The movies have musical and highly creative plots.
 Between 1970s and 1980s, technology has developed this industry and it became quite popular for producing films with immense special effects. Such films it produced include Superman, and Batman. Before long, this industry became quite famous for its stop-motion animation. However, these films achieved these visual effects at a relatively lower cost than the films produced in Hollywood.
Nevertheless, till present, these films have integrated digital production with special effects, colour grading, cutting and other professional features similar with those of Hollywood.
Virtually all of these films portrayed many British culture, attitudes and histories. They were less political in nature and focused more on diverse British life. The industry would witness a change in attitude as the society witness too. It was an avenue in expressing the mind of the society. Unlike the Hollywood block busters, the industry was used as a voice in expressing the strong cultural inclination of its diverse producers. The audience remains the British citizens, which enjoyed observing their culture in their films, irrespective of the increasingly changing societal ways.
However, by the year 2006, the industry had penetrated into the hearts of both youth and adults, witnessing a remarkable growth in profile. Movies that were previously not appreciated suddenly began to witness regular patronage in the capitals cinemas. An example of films produced in this genre includes Adulthood, a film produced in 2008, which succeeded in wining a BAFTA award.
Classical Hollywood cinema
Like the two other industries discussed above, the Classical Hollywood cinema has its own history, style and features too. This includes distinctive visual and sound style. This genre is popular for what is known as invisible style, a name coined from the nature of the camera and the sound recording that never draw attention to themselves.
The major pattern of this industry was the Western nature of all its films. It has a culture of producing movies of either political in nature or biographic and has less cultural inclination like the two previously mentioned industries. It films were usually biographies of political leaders or important citizens. Animated cartoons, musicals, comedies etc and other issues are also included in these films. However, this industry was always in need for fresh material, for the market was extremely large and has no equal across the globe.
  Style
The industry has quite an elaborated style, influenced greatly by Renaissance ideas, such as the rebirth of human. It was thus full of psychological motivation, portraying the strong nature of human will and also the struggles of man in achieving his dreams. The industry focuses on the use of things like facial expression, gestures, flash backs etc to highlight its plots. The action is mildly addressed towards the spectator and costumes were designed distinctively. The industry, like the British counter part, witnessed diverse periods over time, which were three major periods namely, silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood.
Hollywood films can be divided into two major categories which are Blockbusters and independent films Blockbusters are films with extremely high budgets released yearly in order to make profit. These films are quite unparalleled anywhere across the globe. These films revolve around spectacle and high production value, with an enormous budget that worth several hundred of thousand of dollars. The advertising of such films are usually massive, attracting vast number of audience.
Independent films on the other hand are movies made with relatively small budgets and often autonomously of the studio corporation. This type of movies in order to make up for its low cost, focus on high professional quality in terms of acting, directing, screenwriting, and other elements associated with production. Extensive creativity and innovation are applied to such films. These are films more similar to the British counter part.
Comparism of the three
At this juncture, with all the above enumeration, it can be observed that the British film industry is remarkably different from the Hollywood films. As explained earlier, Hollywood has a larger market, wide spread audience, has extensive high budget which British film can not favourably compare with. Despite the success of the British films, it has a tradition of producing films, even with high visual effects at a relatively low cost. Again, over time, the British audience was fewer to the American counter part. The British film industry is also more culturally inclined than the America counter part. The films produced in Britain all had cultural identity, identifying with the culture and histories of the British people. However, the American films were usually Western films portraying strong nature human will and other non- cultural issues.
Since the 1970s, British films have always been distinguished with a visual style, uncommon to Hollywood. It focuses on low-key lighting and unbalanced compositions. It has touched diverse genres from melodrama, to romance, to satires and detective to mention but few. Unlike the Hollywood films, British films can not use setting as a determinant of it genre. American films on its own basically use setting to determine it genre.
Finally, in the recent past, due to the persistence question of the nature of British films, British films were subjected into a cultural identity. The stake holder increasingly became concern about films produced in British loosing a peculiar identity customary to British film. They eventually came up with three question to help in setting this issue right, these question are namely,
Is the production and filming based in the UK
Are the cast, crew andor producers come from the EEA (European Economic Area)
Cultural content  is the film set in the UK, are the characters British
Till present there has been no particular consensus on the particular nature of British films. But the films identity has revolved around cultural content, cultural hubs and cultural practitioners. Films that score an average mark in these three categories will be identified as British films.
However, the British film industry can be said to be more similar to the art cinema of the British. The art cinema has same cultural attitude with the British cinema, showcasing the history and culture of the British citizens. Again, these two film industries share similar creativity in both narrative style and acting. Their budgets are also quite low compared to the American counterpart. Thus one can rightly claim that the British film industry has both similarities and feature to the British art cinema. Summarily, the Hollywood film industry has its own share of quite different identity.