Cinema Memories brings together and analyses the memories of almost a
thousand people of going to the cinema in Britain during the 1960s. It
offers a fresh perspective on the social, cultural and film history of
what has come to be seen as an iconic decade, with the release of films
such as A Taste of Honey, The Sound of Music, Darling, Blow-Up,
Alfie, The Graduate, and Bonnie and Clyde.
Drawing on first-hand accounts, authors Melvyn Stokes, Matthew Jones and
Emma Pett explore how cinema-goers constructed meanings from the films
they watched - through a complex process of negotiation between the
films concerned, their own social and cultural identities, and their
awareness of changes in British society. Their analysis helps the reader
see what light the cultural memory of 1960s cinema-going sheds on how
the Sixties in Britain is remembered and interpreted.
Positioning their study within debates about memory, 1960s cinema, and
the seemingly transformative nature of this decade of British history,
the authors reflect on the methodologies deployed, the use of memories
as historical sources, and the various ways in which cinema and
cinema-going came to mean something to their audiences.
