Choice cuts

For the past decade, film and video art has been the medium of choice for many of our leading Turner Prize-winning artists. But an exhibition at Tate Britain aims to show that British artists have actually been engaged in filmmaking from the beginning of the 20th century.

This year-long exhibition aims to act as something of a corrective to the perception that British artists are a generally conservative lot who leave great revolutions in art forms to others.

An ambitious programme of 170 films by 130 artists promises to reveal the full range of this history, with rarely seen works by figures such as Bloomsbury artist Dora Carrington. Her 1929 film, Doctor Turner's Mental Home - which has only ever been seen at a private screening at the Bloomsbury home of Virginia Woolf - tells the murderous tale of a physician who bumps off his patients.

The films will be repeated in four-day cycles and within each day-long programme the works have been clustered into thematic rather than chronological groupings, suggesting continuities of interest and approach.

As well as rare gems, there will be key films documenting seminal performances from the 1970s, including pieces by Gilbert and George, video portraits by Derek Jarman from the 1980s, and contemporary pieces by Turner Prize winners Steve McQueen and Gillian Wearing. There will also be an extensive programme of related talks and events.