In "Alternative Film Culture", Jamie Sexton looks at the rise of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking in Britain between the wars. The book provides a detailed view of how modernist and anti-mainstream currents emerged in the film industry.European film culture in the inter-war period has long been celebrated for fostering the first wave of avant-garde filmmaking. But many studies of this area have focused upon France, Germany and the Soviet Union, ignoring the activity of the film industry in Britain. "Alternative Film Culture in Inter-War Britain" is the first book-length study of a number of currents which opposed mainstream filmmaking and which championed film as an intellectual, modern art. It traces the growth of new approaches to film through exhibition and writing on cinema, and looks at how this cultural formation shaped certain areas of filmmaking. As such, it takes an interdisciplinary approach in which a study of independent filmmaking in this era is firmly placed within a cultural context, linking the ways in which films were presented, received and produced.This is the first in-depth look at 'alternative film culture' in Britain between the wars will excite many in the film, and film studies, worlds. It combines the history with analysis of the films themselves, and of their reception. It looks at the operations of a key contemporary institution, the original Film Society.