The trajectory of Afterimage

This article charts the history of the British film magazine Afterimage, from its prehistory at the University of Essex in the late 1960s to its final issue in 1987. I trace Afterimage’s presentation of various interlocking strands of experimental and political cinema, the mutations in its theoretical and aesthetic postures, and the imbrication of the journal and its editors – Simon Field, Peter Sainsbury, and later Ian Christie and Michael O’Pray – in alternative, independent practices of film-making, programming, distribution and publishing. Via Afterimage, I sketch the history of a larger radical film culture in Britain that emerged in the late 1960s but had largely dissipated as the 1980s drew to a close.