Heritage Film Audiences

This is a study of audiences for historical representation in film. The period drama is a British phenomenon but this is the first empirically-based study of the genre's audience. By exploring the attitudes and habits of this audience, it breaks new ground both in scholarship of contemporary period films and in film-audience studies. The book contrasts two opposite sections of late-1990s UK audiences, which has illuminating and unpredicted results. It includes an extensive discussion of Merchant Ivory productions and Jane Austen adaptations. It includes 11 tables that illustrate the findings of the Heritage Audience Survey. There are 3 appendices contain details of the questionnaire and the demographics of respondents.