‘Good Business, Good Policy, Good Patriotism’: The British Film Weeks of 1924

Abstract

This article examines the British Film Weeks of 1924. Drawing on trade, national and local press reports, I explore how these high-profile events impacted on the British film industry’s operations at this time and on broader discussions of British national cinema raging in the public sphere. While most academic literature dismisses the ‘Weeks’ as the failed projects of an ailing industry, I argue that they served as a testing ground for a number of industrial and political initiatives that would influence the ways in which British cinema was debated and promoted later in the 1920s and beyond.