Jill Craigie: Film and Feminism in Postwar Britain

 

From the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, Jill Craigie wrote, produced, and directed the innovative films that stood at the center of her diverse career in British cinema, radio, television, and print journalism. Yvonne Tasker and Sadie Wearing analyze Craigie’s oeuvre while delving into the filmmaker’s use of the medium as the space for her distinctive feminist engagement with key cultural, social, and political questions.

Tasker and Wearing reconsider Craigie’s place and reputation in the history of British Cinema. Craigie created work that showed a strong critical voice and at the same time challenged contemporary modes of filmmaking with both documentary and drama. Tasker and Wearing examine her feminist and working-class influences and also emphasize the democratic impulse that drove Craigie to include her subjects’ participation, and her commitment to representing them on screen. Throughout, Tasker and Wearing analyze Craigie’s work against the backdrop of postwar concerns and preoccupations.

Distinctive and nuanced, Jill Craigie reconsiders the career of a groundbreaking woman director.