Sarah Street, Professor of Film and Foundation Chair of Drama
Research Interests
My main areas of research activity are British cinema history and the contemporary film industry; the politics and economics of the film industry; British film genres; aspects of costume and cinema, including work on Hitchcock, mise-en-scène, set design and colour film. My book publications include Cinema and State: The Film Industry and the British Government (co-authored with Margaret Dickinson, British Film Institute, 1985); British National Cinema (Routledge, 1997; 2nd edition 2009); Costume and Cinema (Wallflower, 2001); British Cinema in Documents (Routledge, 2000); European Cinema (Palgrave/Macmillan, co-edited with Jill Forbes, 2000); Moving Performance: British Stage and Screen (Flicks Books, co-edited with Linda Fitzsimmons, 2000); Transatlantic Crossings: British Feature Films in the USA (Continuum, 2002); The Titanic in Myth and Memory (I.B. Tauris, co-edited with Tim Bergfelder, 2004); Black Narcissus (I.B. Tauris, 2005) and Queer Screen: The Queer Reader (Routledge, co-edited with Jackie Stacey, 2007). My latest book, Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema, was co-authored with Tim Bergfelder and Sue Harris (Amsterdam University Press, 2007), and was the result of a collaborative AHRC-funded project. In addition to my books and edited volumes I have published over 40 articles in journals/ chapters in edited collections, and delivered plenary/ keynote addresses all over the world. My current research is for a 3-year AHRC-funded project, The Negotiation of Innovation: Colour and British Cinema, 1900-55. I have extensive experience in journal editing and am currently a co-editor of Screen and of the Journal of British Cinema and Television. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Screen I curated a special display on the Journal which was exhibited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Aug-Sept 2009. I am co-leader of the University Research Theme, Screen Research @ Bristol.
I have been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant for a three-year project entitled, 'Colour in the 1920s: Cinema and its Intermedial Contexts'. This project investigates the major spheres of colour expression in commercial and experimental motion pictures of the 1920s. Taking cinema as the galvanizing focus, it will contextualise colour's intermedial role in other arts - including commercial and print culture; fashion and industry; theatre and the performing arts - in order to produce a fully comprehensive, comparative and interdisciplinary study of the impact of colour during a decade of profound social, economic and cultural change. The project team consists of myself as PI, Dr Josh Yumibe (St Andrews) as Co-Investigator and two post-doctoral researchers.
Current and potential research student projects
Sarah Street regularly supervises doctoral students and current students are working on Colour in Silent Cinema and The Films of Joseph Losey. In the past she has supervised students in many subject areas including on Screenwriting Manuals in the British film industry in the 1920s and 1930s; Counter-Cinematic Appropriations of Shakespeare; Alfred Hitchcock and self-reflexivity; Amateur home movies made in India in the 1930s, and Genre and Intertextuality. She is particularly interested in supervising students interested in any aspect of British cinema; film and history, including Hollywood; film costume and mise-en-scène; set design and colour film aesthetics and technologies. She is also interested in historical perspectives on film marketing and promotion. Any other topics relevant to her expertise will be considered.
Selected list of current projects and recent outcomes
Sarah Street’s current research is her AHRC-funded project The Negotiation of Innovation: Colour and British Cinema, 1900-55, on which she is the Principal Investigator. Co-Investigator is Dr Simon Brown (Kingston University); Research Associate is Dr Liz Watkins and PhD student is Vicky Jackson. Prior to this project she worked with Prof. Tim Bergfelder (University of Southampton) and Dr Sue Harris (Queen Mary, University of London) on an AHRC-funded project on Set Design in 1930s European Cinema. She is a participant/workshop member in the AHRC-funded Women’s Film History Network – UK/Ireland.
Recent outcomes include the following keynote addresses and papers:-
2009: ‘Blithe Spirit (1945) and the Lure of Technicolor in Wartime Britain’, invited address to Columbia University Film Studies research seminar, New York
2009: ‘The Negotiation of Innovation: Colour Films in Britain’, invited lecture/seminar discussion, New York University
2009: ‘Designing for Moving Pictures: Production Designers, Authorship and Archives’, plenary address ‘Archives and Auteurs’ conference, University of Stirling, Scotland
2009: ‘Alfred Junge and British Cinema’, invited plenary address, ‘Destination London’, film festival event, Austrian Film Museum, Vienna
2009: ‘Archive Fever and Film Studies’, invited plenary address, ‘Studies Beyond the Screen’ conference, Exeter
2009: ‘Questions of colour aesthetics: Image, sound, colour and the senses in The Thief of Bagdad (1940)’, guest research seminar, Department of Film, University of Aberystwyth
2008: ‘Designing Russia’s Past’: Representations of Revolutionary and Tsarist Russia in American, British and German cinema, 1927-39’, International Symposium, ‘Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in 19th and 20th Century Europe’, Institute of Intercultural Studies, funded by the European Science Foundation, Sinaia, Romania
2008: ‘In Blushing Technicolor: Colour in Blithe Spirit’, David Lean 100th Anniversary Conference, Queen Mary, University of London
Recent articles and chapters in books include:-
2009: ‘“Another Medium Entirely”: Esther Harris, National Screen Service and Film Trailers in Britain, 1940-60’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 433-48
2009: ‘20 million people can’t be wrong: Anna Neagle and popular British stardom’, co-authored with Josephine Dolan in Melanie Williams and Melanie Bell (eds), The British Woman’s Picture (Routledge), pp. 34-48
2009: ‘Colour Consciousness: Natalie Kalmus and Technicolor Films in Britain’ in Screen 50: 2, pp. 124-50
2009: ‘British Film and the National Interest, 1927-39’ in Robert Murphy (ed), The British Cinema Book (3rd edition, British Film Institute), pp. 185-191(chapter originally published in 1st edition, 1997)
2008: ‘Heritage Crime: The case of Agatha Christie’ in Robert Shail (ed), Seventies British Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 105-116. This has been translated into French (2009) as ‘Le film policier patrimonial: le cas d’Agatha Christie’ in Raphaelle Moine, Brigitte Rollet and Genevieve Sellier (eds), Policiers et criminals: Un genre populaire European sur grand et petit ecrans (L’Harmattan), pp. 101-106.
2008: ‘Extending frames and exploring spaces: Alfred Junge, set design and genre in British cinema’ in Tim Bergfelder and Christian Cargnelli (eds), Destination London: German-Speaking Emigres and British Cinema, 1925-50 (Berghahn Press), pp. 100-110
2007: ‘Der ultimative schiffsuntergang: die Titanic in legende, erinnerung und film’ in Bewegte See: Maritimes Kino, 1912-1957 (Ein Cinegraph Buch), pp. 151-159
2007: ‘British Cinema, American Reception: Black Narcissus and the Legion Of Decency’ in James Chapman, Mark Glancy and Sue Harper (eds), The New Film History: Approaches, Methods, Sources (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 201-214.
2007: Contributions to Pam Cook (ed), The Cinema Book (3rd edition, British Film Institute), pp. 175-76, 178-80, 185-87.
Book Publications
British National Cinema 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2008), pp. 296
Film Architecture and the Trans-national Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema, co-authored with Tim Bergfelder and Sue Harris (Amsterdam University Press, 2007), pp. 316
Black Narcissus (I.B. Tauris, 2005) pp. 102
Transatlantic Crossings: British feature films in the USA (Continuum, 2002), pp. 280
Costume and Cinema: Dress Codes in Popular Film (Wallflower Press, 2001), pp. 120
British Cinema in Documents (Routledge, 2000), pp. 194
British National Cinema (Routledge, 1997), pp. 230
Cinema and State: the Film Industry and the British Government, 1927-84, co-authored with Margaret Dickinson, British Film Institute, 1985), pp. 280
(co-edited with Jackie Stacey), Queer Screen: The Screen Reader (Routledge, 2007) pp. 304
(co-edited with Tim Bergfelder), The Titanic in Myth and Memory: Representations in Visual and Literary Culture(I.B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 241
(co-edited with Jill Forbes), European Cinema: An Introduction (Macmillan, 2000), pp. 207
(co-edited with Linda Fitzsimmons)Moving Performance: British stage and screen, 1890s-1920s (Flicks Books, 2000), pp. 175