3. Gustave Flaubert In France many films provisional realism descended from Gustave Flaubert. Whereas in Britain everyday social interaction was found in Dickens and Thomas Hardy. Rescued by Rover (1905) created by Cecil Hepworth caught Edwardian England at a particular moment. James Williamson created ‘A reservist before the war’ which offered a portrait of the Boer War serviceman returning to unemployment.

4. 1896-1977 Sir Michael Balcon, Balcon was born in Birmingham and educated at George Dixon Grammar School, Edgbaston. After WWI he started in films as a distributor, then formed Victory Motion Pictures with Victor Saville and produced his first film (Women to Women). In the early 1920′s, he launched Alfred Hitchcock’s career and built up a big annual production programme of sound films for Gainsborough and Gaumont-British. Head of MGM English production, 1936-38, then in charge of production at Ealing. Knighted 1948. A regular and committed spokesman for the British film industry, especially in the 1940s. After Ealing, produced some films independently Sammy Going South (1962), and helped form Bryanston Films, a group of independent film-makers including several ex-Ealing colleagues. After a frustrating period as Chairman of British Lion (1964-68), became Chairman of the British Film Institute’s Experimental Film Fund, retiring 1972. “ A key figure in the emergence of a national cinema characterised by stoicism and verisimilitude .”

5. Women now were working alongside men and challenging pre-assigned gender roles. This encouraged a ‘one nation, one goal’ philosophy. Films such as ‘Target for Tonight (1944)’ smoothed away tensions of a class-bound society in the depiction of factory life, the suburban street and the forces’ mess. “ Cinema became a place where the public could reaffirm their values of humanity.”- Roger Manvell Gentler patrician values became the face of British cinema rather than the corporatisation and Americanisation.

6. 1950’s-1960’s The new wave was fed by the ‘Angry Young Men 'of 1950’s theatre, the verisimilitude of Italian neo-realism and the youth appeal of the French new wave. ‘ A Kind Of Loving’ (1962) brought wide shots and plain speaking to stories of ordinary Britons negotiating the social structures of post-war Britain.

8. Assessed the impact of the consumer society on family life, charting the erosion of the welfare state and the consensus that built it. Ken Loach's Film’s Reflected the shift from the collectivist mood of the war years to the individualism of the post-war decades in its very form. Loach’s films went from the improvised long-take naturalism of ‘Poor Cow’ and ‘Kes’ to the social melodrama ‘Rolling Stones’ (1993) and ‘Ladybird Ladybird’ (1994), wider social issues now explored via emotional and dramatic individual stories.

9. Mike Leigh’s Film’s The breakdown of the collective consensus in post-war Britain seems to be captured in the tragicomic exchanges of ‘Life is Sweet’ (1990), Naked (1993) and Secrets and Lies (1996). Leigh examined the fractures in domestic and social life wrought by divisive Thatcherite policies in an increasingly fragmented and multicultural Britain. Women in Loach and Leigh are often complex and powerful individuals.