The oldest known surviving film was shot in the United Kingdom as well as early colour films. 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, Ian Mckellen, Joan Collins, Judi Dench, Julie Andrews, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gary Oldman, Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Peter O’Toole and Kate Winslet. Some of the films with the largest ever box office returns have been made in the United Kingdom, including the fourth and fifth highest-grossing film franchises.
Cecil Antonio Richardson was an English theatre and film director, producer and screenwriter, whose career spanned five decades. He was identified with the "angry young men" group of British directors and playwrights during the 1950s, and was later a key figure in the British New Wave filmmaking movement.
Johnny Speight was an English television scriptwriter of many classic British sitcoms.
Harold Thomas Gregson, known professionally as John Gregson, was an English actor of stage, television and film, with 40 credited film roles. He was best known for his crime drama and comedy roles.
Alexander Mackendrick was an American-born Scottish film director and screenwriter. He directed nine feature films between 1949 and 1967, before retiring from filmmaking to become an influential professor at the California Institute of the Arts.
Nice Time is a 1957 documentary film made by Alain Tanner and Claude Goretta in Britain and included in the third Free Cinema programme at the National Film Theatre, London in May 1957. It won the Experimental Film prize at the film festival in Venice and much critical praise.
Frank Launder was a British writer, film director and producer, who made more than 40 films, many of them in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat.
Denis John “Jack” HildyardBSC was a British cinematographer who worked on more than 80 films during his career.
Trevor Griffiths was an English dramatist.
Colin Gordon was a British actor. Although primarily a stage actor he made numerous appearances on television and in cinema films, generally in comedies. His stage career was mainly in the West End, but he was seen in the provinces in some touring productions.
John Leonard Duncan Mackenzie was a Scottish film director who worked in British film from the late 1960s, first as an assistant director and later as an independent director himself.
Michael Leighton George Relph was an English film producer, art director, screenwriter and film director. He was the son of actor George Relph.
Stephen Woolley is an English filmmaker and actor. His career has spanned over three and a half decades, for which he was awarded the BAFTA award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema in February 2019. As a producer, he has been Oscar-nominated for The Crying Game (1992), and has produced multi-Academy Award nominated films including Mona Lisa (1986), Little Voice (1998), Michael Collins (1996), The End of the Affair (1999), Interview with the Vampire (1994), and Carol (2016). He runs the production company Number 9 Films with his partner Elizabeth Karlsen.
It's Great to Be Young is a 1956 British Technicolor musical comedy film directed by Cyril Frankel and starring Cecil Parker and John Mills. It was written by Ted Willis. The story concerns an inspirational school music teacher.
O Dreamland is a 1953 documentary short film by British film director Lindsay Anderson.
Free Cinema was a documentary film movement that emerged in the United Kingdom in the mid-1950s. The term referred to an absence of propagandised intent or deliberate box office appeal. Co-founded by Lindsay Anderson with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza Mazzetti, the movement began with a programme of three short films at the 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.
Together is a 1956 city symphony film about two deaf people in the East End of London, directed by Lorenza Mazzetti, in collaboration with Denis Horne, based on his short story, The Glass Marble.
Stuart Legg was a pioneering English documentary filmmaker. At the 14th Academy Awards in 1941, Legg's National Film Board of Canada film Churchill's Island became the first-ever documentary to win an Oscar.
The BFI Production Board (1964-2000) was a state-funded film production fund managed by the British Film Institute (BFI) and "explicitly charged with backing work by new and uncommercial filmmakers." Emerging from the Experimental Film Fund, the BFI Production Board was a major source of funding for experimental, art house, animation, short and documentary cinema, with a continuing commitment to funding under-represented voices in filmmaking.
We Are the Lambeth Boys is a 1959 British documentary film directed by Karel Reisz. Filmed in the summer of 1958, it was sponsored by the Ford motor company as part of a 'Look at Britain' series. Lambeth Boys was one of the last films to be made by the Free Cinema movement, and offered a sympathetic portrait of the lives of young working-class people in South London.
