Channel 4 Films

   Channel 4, which first began broadcasting in 1982, developed its public service role through partnerships with British Screen and the BFI, and commissioned many critically important films of the 1980s and 1990s, including The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), Angel (1982), The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983), Another Time, Another Place (1983), A Room With a View (1985), Letter to Brezhnev (1985), Caravaggio (1986), Mona Lisa (1986), Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), Riff Raff (1990), Life is Sweet (1990), The Crying Game (1992) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). Films made for Channel 4 are frequently characterized by a juxtaposition between perceptions of the familiar and the foreign, the domestic and the exotic. They also tend to deal with less mainstream aspects to society (for example, homosexuality in Another Country (1984), My Beautiful Launderette (1985), Maurice (1987) and Prick Up Your Ears (1987)) but in a soft-focus, traditionalist way that makes the subjects palatable to mainstream audiences. In this way, the films seem to fulfil the television station’s remit and raise audience consciousness but also make a commercial profit.

   See also: Channel 4; Euston Films

   PETER CHILDS