The United Kingdom has had a significant film industry for over a century. While film production reached an all-time high in 1936, the "golden age" of British cinema is usually thought to have occurred in the 1940s, during which the directors David Lean, Michael Powell, and Carol Reed produced their most critically acclaimed works. Many British actors have accrued critical success and worldwide recognition, such as Audrey Hepburn, Olivia de Havilland, Vivien Leigh, Glynis Johns, Maggie Smith, Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Joan Collins, Judi Dench, Julie Andrews, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gary Oldman, Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins Hugh Grant and Kate Winslet. Some of the films with the largest ever box office returns have been made in the United Kingdom, including the third and sixth highest-grossing film franchises.
Four Feather Falls is a British television programme, the third puppet TV show produced by Gerry Anderson for Granada Television. It was based on an idea by Barry Gray, who also wrote the show's music. The series was the first to use an early version of Anderson's Supermarionation puppetry. Thirty-nine 13-minute episodes were produced, broadcast by Granada from February until November 1960. The setting is the late 19th-century fictional Kansas town of Four Feather Falls, where the hero of the series, Tex Tucker, is a sheriff. The four feathers of the title refers to four magical feathers given to Tex by the Indian chief Kalamakooya as a reward for saving his grandson. One of the feathers allowed Tex's guns to swivel and fire without being touched whenever he was in danger, two conferred the power of speech on Tex's horse and dog, and the fourth feather could summon Kalamakooya.
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. Best known for directing films in the science fiction, crime, and historical drama genres, his work is known for its atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. Scott has received many accolades throughout his career, including the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2018, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. In 2003, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
Nicolas Jack Roeg was an English film director and cinematographer, best known for directing Performance (1970), Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Bad Timing (1980) and The Witches (1990).
Johnny Speight was an English television scriptwriter of many classic British sitcoms.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a British television adaptation of the 1949 novel of the same name by George Orwell, originally broadcast on BBC Television in December 1954. The production proved to be hugely controversial, with questions asked in Parliament and many viewer complaints over its supposed subversive nature and horrific content. In a 2000 poll of industry experts conducted by the British Film Institute to determine the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four was ranked in seventy-third position.
Oh... Rosalinda!! is a 1955 British musical comedy film by the British director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars Michael Redgrave, Mel Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Ludmilla Tchérina and Anton Walbrook and features Anneliese Rothenberger and Dennis Price.
Jack Isaac Clayton was a British film director and producer who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen.
Frank Launder was a British writer, film director and producer, who made more than 40 films, many of them in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat.
Geoffrey Gilyard Unsworth, OBE, BSC was a British cinematographer who worked on nearly 90 feature films spanning over more than 40 years. He is best known for his work on films such as Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bob Fosse's Cabaret and Richard Donner's Superman.
Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is a 1968 British comedy film produced and directed by Clive Donner, based on the 1965 novel of the same name by Hunter Davies. The film stars Barry Evans, Judy Geeson and Angela Scoular. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the events of May 1968 in France.
Just a Boys' Game is a 1979 Play for Today written by Peter McDougall and directed by John Mackenzie.
Monitor was a British arts television programme that was launched on 2 February 1958 on BBC and ran until 1965.
Loving Memory is a 1970 black and white psychological drama film written and directed by Tony Scott, credited as Anthony Scott. This 52 minute film was made 12 years before Scott's feature directorial debut, The Hunger. It was partly financed by the actor Albert Finney and the BFI Production Board, and was shown at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.
Explosion of a Motor Car is a 1900 British short black-and-white silent comedy film, directed by Cecil M. Hepworth, featuring an exploding automobile scattering the body parts of its driver and passenger. "One of the most memorable of early British trick films" according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "was one of the first films to play with the laws of physics for comic effect." It features one of the earliest known uses in a British film of the stop trick technique discovered by French filmmaker Georges Méliès in 1896, and also includes one of the earliest film uses of comedy delay – later to be widely used as a convention in animated films – where objects take much longer to fall to the ground than they would do in reality. It is included in the BFI DVD Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers and a clip is featured in Paul Merton's interactive guide to early British silent comedy How They Laughed on the BFI website.
The Biter Bit is an 1899 British short black-and-white silent comedy film, produced by Bamforth & Co Ltd, featuring a boy playing a practical joke on a gardener by grasping his hose to stop the water flow and then letting go again when the gardener looks down it to check. The film, "is an English remake" of Auguste and Louis Lumière's L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895), according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "providing a good illustration of how early film production companies cheerfully plagiarised each other's work" with "a few minor differences between, most notably a rather greater sense of space and depth in the Bamforth version" and "three distinct planes to the action". It is included in the BFI DVD Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers and a clip is used in Paul Merton's interactive guide to early British silent comedy How They Laughed on the BFI website.
Lloyd Reckord was a Jamaican actor, film maker, and stage director who lived in England for some years. Reckord appeared in 1958 in a West End production of Hot Summer Night, which as an ITV adaptation broadcast on 1 February 1959 contained the earliest known example of an interracial kiss on television. His brother was the dramatist Barry Reckord.
Pressure is a 1976 British drama film directed by Horace Ové and starring Herbert Norville, Oscar James and Frank Singuineau. Co-written by Ové with Samuel Selvon, it is hailed as the UK's first Black dramatic feature-length film, and has been characterised as "a gritty and dynamic study of a generation in crisis". Ové has said: "What Pressure tried to do was to portray the experience of the Windrush generation, the kids who came with them and the kids born here."
Rock You Sinners is a 1957 British second feature black and white musical film featuring early British rock and roll, including Art Baxter and His Rock 'n' Roll Sinners, best known for their song Rock You Sinners. It is generally regarded as the first British rock and roll movie.
The Bike Ride, Bike Round or Boy on the Bike is a 1973 advert for the bread maker Hovis. It was directed by Ridley Scott.
