British children's films have played a part in the childhoods of generations of young people around the world for over a century. Until now, however, their cherished status has remained largely unexplored. In this book, Noel Brown relates the history of children's cinema in Britain from the early years of commercial cinema to the present day, to reveal the reasons behind its acclaim in international popular culture.Drawing on multiple sources, Brown provides in-depth analysis of a range of iconic films, including The Railway Children, The Thief of Bagdad, Bugsy Malone, the Harry Potter films,Mary Poppins, Nanny McPhee, Paddington, Oliver!, and Aardman's Wallace and Gromit series. Futhermore, he investigates industrial and commercial contexts, such as the role of the Children's Film Foundation; and includes revealing insights on changing social and cultural norms, such as the once-sacred tradition of Saturday morning cinema. Brown challenges common prejudices that children's films are inherently shallow or simplistic, revealing the often complex strategies that underpin their enduring appeal to audiences of all ages and backgrounds.In addition, he shows how the films allow a privileged access to historic cultures and the nation's political past. In doing so, Brown firmly establishes children's cinema as an important genre not only for students and scholars of film studies but also for those interested in socio-cultural history, the production and reception of popular entertainment and anyone looking for entertainment, escapism and nostalgia.

This book argues that over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the cinema in Britain became the site on which childhood was projected, examined, and understood. Through an analysis of these projections; via case studies that encompass early cinema, pre and post-war film, and contemporary cinema; this book interprets the child in British cinema as a device through which to reflect upon issues of national culture, race, empire, class, and gender. Beginning with a discussion of early cinematic depictions of the child in Britain, this book examines cultural expressions of nationhood produced via non-commercial cinemas for children. It considers the way cinema encroaches on the moral edification of the child and the ostensible vibrancy and vitality of the British boy in post-war cinema. The author explores the representational and instrumental differences between depictions of boys and girls before extending this discussion to investigate the treatment of migrant, refugee, and immigrant children in British cinema. It ends by recapitulating these arguments through a discussion of internationally successful British blockbuster cinema. The child in this study is a mobile figure, deployed across generic boundaries, throughout the history of British cinema and embodying a range of discourses regarding the health and wellbeing of the nation.

Children make up one of cinema's largest audiences, yet from its infancy cinema has in the minds of moral watchdogs accompanied penny papers, comic books and mobile phones as a threat to children's health, morality and literacy. Mobilising original research, and writing with energy and wit, Sarah J. Smith explores the recurring debates in Britain and America about how children use and respond to the media. She focuses on a key example: the controversy surrounding children and cinema in the 1930s. Arguing that children are agents in their cinema viewing, not victims, she uncovers children's distinct cinema culture and reveals the ways in which they subverted or circumvented official censorship to regulate their own viewing of a variety of films, including "Frankenstein" and "King Kong". In an era when children are seen to be 'at risk' in so many ways, this involving book is a refreshing and illuminating read for all those interested in its subject.

This book offers a comprehensive and revisionist overview of British cinema as, on the one hand, a commercial entertainment industry and, on the other, a series of institutions centred on economics, funding and relations to government.

This volume explores film and television for children and youth. While children’s film and television vary in form and content from country to country, their youth audience, ranging from infants to “screenagers”, is the defining feature of the genre and is written into the DNA of the medium itself. This collection offers a contemporary analysis of film and television designed for this important audience, with particular attention to new directions evident in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With examples drawn from Iran, China, Korea, India, Israel, Eastern Europe, the Philippines, and France, as well as from the United States and the United Kingdom, contributors address a variety of issues ranging from content to production, distribution, marketing, and the use of film, both as object and medium, in education. Through a diverse consideration of media for young infants up to young adults, this volume reveals the newest trends in children’s film and television and its role as both a source of entertainment and pedagogy.

The cult of the child performer was a significant emergence of the Victorian age. Fierce public debate and lasting legislation grew out of the conflict between a desire for juvenile display and a determination to stop exploitation. This study explores the social and artistic context of their lives and their developing professionalism as actors.

Exploring cultural and social differences in defining a children's film / Becky Parry -- Screening innocence in children's film / Debbie Olson -- Screen adaptations of the Wizard of OZ and metafilmicity in children's film / Ryan Bunch -- Children's films and the avant-garde / Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer -- Intertextuality and 'adult' humour in children's film / Sam Summers -- Children's film and the problematic 'happy ending' / Noel Brown -- The cop and the kid in 1930s American film / Pamela Robertson-Wojcik -- History, forbidden games, children's play, and trauma theory / Ian Wojcik-Andrews -- Changing conceptions of childhood in the work of the Children's Film Foundation / Robert Shail -- Migrant children and the 'space between' in the films of Angelopoulos / Stephanie Hemelryk Donald -- Iranian cinema and a world through the eyes of a child / John Stephens -- The American tween and contemporary Hollywood cinema / Timothy Shary -- Growing up on Scandinavian screens / Anders Lysne -- Mary Pickford, Alma Taylor, and girlhood in Early Hollywood and British cinema / Matthew Smith -- Craft and play in Lotte Reiniger's fairy tale films / Caroline Ruddell -- Disney's musical landscapes / Daniel Batchelder -- Hayley Mills and the Disneyfication of childhood / David Buckingham -- Danny Kaye as children's film star / Bruce Babington -- Real animals and the problem of anthropomorphism in children's film / Claudia Alonso-Recarte and Ignacio Ramos-Gay -- Nation, identity, and the arrikin streak in Australian children's cinema / Adrian Schober -- Nationalism in Swedish Children's Film and the Case of Astrid Lindgren / Anders Wilhelm Åberg -- Unreality, Fantasy, and the Anti-Fascist Politics of the Children's Films of Satyajit Ray / Koel Banerjee -- Gender, Ideology, and Nationalism in Chinese Children's Cinema / Yuhan Huang -- Ethnic and racial difference in the Hungarian animated features Macskafogó/Cat City (1986) and Macskafogó 2/Cat City 2 (2007) / Gábor Gergely -- Negotiating East and West when representing childhood in Miyazaki's Spirited away / Katherine Whitehurst -- Coming of age in South Korean cinema / Sung-Ae Lee -- The Walt Disney Company, family entertainment, and global movie hits / Peter Krämer -- Reading Jason and the argonauts as a children's film / Susan Smith -- Hollywood and the baby boom audience in the 1950s and 1960s / James Russell -- Don Bluth and the Disney renaissance / Peter Kunze -- On 'love experts', evil princes, gullible princesses, and Frozen / Amy M. Davis -- Hollywood, regulation, and the 'disappearing' children's film / Filipa Antunes -- How children learn to 'read' movies / Cary Bazalgette -- Star Wars, children's film culture, and fan paratexts / Lincoln Geraghty -- Norwegian tween girls and everyday life through Disney tween franchises / Ingvild Kvale Sørenssen -- A multimethod study on contemporary young audiences and their film/cinema discourses and practices in Flanders, Belgium / Aleit Veenstra, Philippe Meers, and Daniël Biltereyst -- An empirical report on young people's responses to adult fantasy films / Martin Barker -- Disney's adult audiences / James R. Mason.

From the 1950s to the 1980s the Children's Film Foundation made films for Saturday morning cinema clubs across the UK - entertaining and educating generations of British children. This first history of this much-loved organisation provides an overview of the CFF's films, interviews with key backstage personnel, and memories of audience members.

Childhood in Animation: Navigating a Secret World explores how children are viewed in animated cinema and television and examines the screen spaces that they occupy. The image of the child is often a site of conflict, one that has been captured, preserved, and recollected on screen; but what do these representations tell us about the animated child and how do they compare to their real counterparts? Is childhood simply a metaphor for innocence, or something far more complex that encompasses agency, performance, and othering? Childhood in Animation focuses on key screen characters, such as DJ, Norman, Lilo, the Lost Boys, Marji, Parvana, Bluey, Kirikou, Robyn, Mebh, Cartman and Bart, amongst others, to see how they are represented within worlds of fantasy, separation, horror, politics, and satire, as well as viewing childhood itself through a philosophical, sociological, and global lens. Ultimately, this book navigates the rabbit hole of the ‘elsewhere’ to reveal the secret space of childhood, where anything (and everything) is possible. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of animation, childhood studies, film and television studies, and psychology and sociology.

Since the publication of the first children's periodical in the 1750s, magazines have been an affordable and accessible way for children to read and form virtual communities. Despite the range of children's periodicals that exist, they have not been studied to the same extent as children's literature. The Edinburgh History of Children's Periodicals marks the first major history of magazines for young people from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. Bringing together periodicals from Britain, Ireland, North America, Australia, New Zealand and India, this book explores the roles of gender, race and national identity in the construction of children as readers and writers. It provides new insights both into how child readers shaped the magazines they read and how magazines have encouraged children to view themselves as political and world subjects.