This course invites you to consider the usefulness of film as a way into key historical and historiographical debates in 20th century Britain.  Over the course of the century cinema-going emerged as the most popular demotic leisure activity— its appeal cutting across divisions of class, gender, age and region. Over the course of the century, moreover, film became one of the key sites at which to reflect on and make sense of processes of social, cultural and political change in a period of massive upheaval. Taking this as a starting point, we invite you to consider the historical meanings and significance of a series of genres or moments of filmmaking in Britain from the First World War to the present day. These include war and film, the documentary movement of the 1930s, Ealing and Carry On comedies and narratives of Imperial adventure. Conceptualizing British film in its broadest transnational and Imperial context, we thus consider the ways in which ideas of Britishness have been represented, reconfigured and received. Throughout, the course aims to get you to think critically about key issues of methodology and epistemology involved in using film as historical source - production, plot, visuality, music - as well as issues of audience and reception. In so doing we aim to move beyond a treatment of film as either a free-floating text or a ‘mirror for England’ in order to situate it at a particular historical moment.