Free Cinema

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Free Cinema was a

National Film Theatre, London on 5 February 1956. The programme was such a success that five more programmes appeared under the ‘Free Cinema’ banner before the founders decided to end the series. The last event was held in March 1959. Three of the screenings consisted of work from overseas filmmakers.[1]

Background

Together with Gavin Lambert, Anderson and Reisz had previously founded the short-lived but influential journal Sequence, of which Anderson later wrote 'No Film Can Be Too Personal'. So ran the initial pronouncement in the first Free Cinema manifesto. It could equally well have been the motto of SEQUENCE'.[2]

The manifesto was drawn up by Anderson and Mazzetti at a Charing Cross cafe named The Soup Kitchen, where Mazzetti worked. It read:

These films were not made together; nor with the idea of showing them together. But when they came together, we felt they had an attitude in common. Implicit in this attitude is a belief in freedom, in the importance of people and the significance of the everyday.

As filmmakers we believe that
      No film can be too personal.
      The image speaks. Sound amplifies and comments.
      Size is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim.
      An attitude means a style. A style means an attitude.[3]

At an interview in 2001, Mazzetti explained that the reference to size was prompted by the then-new experiments in CinemaScope and other large screen formats. "The image speaks" was an assertion of the primacy of the image over the sound. Reisz said that ‘An attitude means a style’ meant that ‘a style is not a matter of camera angles or fancy footwork, it's an expression, an accurate expression of your particular opinion’.[4]

The first ‘Free Cinema’ programme featured just three films:

  1. Anderson's O Dreamland (1953), previously unshown, about an amusement park in Margate, Kent
  2. Reisz and Richardson's Momma Don't Allow (1956), about a Wood Green (North London) jazz club
  3. Mazzetti's
    East End.[5]

The films were accompanied by the above provocative

Le Sang des bêtes.[7]

Characteristics

The films were free in the sense that they were made outside the confines of the film industry and were distinguished by their style and attitude and the conditions of production. All of the films were made cheaply, for no more than a few hundred pounds, mostly with grants from the

middle-class
-dominated British film industry of the time.

The founders of the movement were dismissive of mainstream documentary film-making in Britain, particularly of the

Direct Cinema
movements.

Legacy

Free Cinema was a major influence on the British New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and all of the founders except Mazzetti would make films associated with the movement. Richardson directed Look Back in Anger (1958), A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962); Reisz directed Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960); and Anderson directed This Sporting Life (1963) and If.... (1968).

Many of these films have also been categorized as part of the kitchen sink realism genre, and many of them are adaptations of novels or plays written by members of Britain's so-called "angry young men".

See also

References

  1. ^ Arts: The British Free Cinema movement-Film-The Guardian
  2. ^ SEQUENCE: Introduction to a Reprint, Lindsay Anderson Archive, University of Stirling, accessed 13 February 2008
  3. ^ "Free Cinema". Archived from the original on 5 March 2008. Retrieved 14 February 2008.
  4. David Robinson, Walter Lassally, Lorenza Mazzetti and Karel Reisz, chaired by Kevin MacDonald
  5. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Together (1956)".
  6. ^ Nonfiction Film: A Critical History by Richard Meran Barsam-Google Books
  7. ^ BFI-Sight & Sound-Free Cinema Programmes

External links

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