Cinema on the Front Line: British Soldiers and Cinema in the First World War

Cinema on the Front Line is the winner of the 2021 Richard Wall Memorial Award for an exemplary work in the field of recorded performance. It is the first comprehensive history and analysis of how cinema intersected with the lives of British soldiers during the First World War, documenting the wartime use of cinema as recreational support and entertainment. The author makes extensive use of war diaries and other military records to foreground the voices and perspectives of British soldiers themselves, and includes discussion of over 70 films.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 29 October 2021
Publisher: University of Exeter Press

Winner of the Theatre Library Associations 2021 Richard Wall Memorial Award for an exemplary work in the field of recorded performance, Cinema on the Front Line provides a comprehensive history and analysis of how cinema intersected with the lives of British soldiers during the First World War. Spanning from domestic recruitment drives to makeshift theatrical venues established on the front line, and even in convalescent hospitals and camps, this book sheds light on the previously unrecognized significance of cinema as a recreational support and entertainment for soldiers enduring the trauma of conflict. Through extensive archival research, the author highlights the voices and perspectives of British soldiers themselves, drawing from war diaries and other military records. The book includes a discussion of over 70 films, making it of interest to specialists in British film history, propaganda film, exhibition and audience studies, as well as historians and students of the First World War, propaganda, and the military.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47788/LAML7430

Weight: 560g
Dimension: 164 x 241 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781905816736