Lindsay Gordon Anderson was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading-light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for his 1968 film if...., which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 1969 and marked Malcolm McDowell's cinematic debut. He is also notable, though not a professional actor, for playing a minor role in the Academy Award-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. McDowell produced a 2007 documentary about his experiences with Anderson, Never Apologize.
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.
This Sporting Life is a 1963 British kitchen sink drama film directed by Lindsay Anderson. Based on the 1960 novel of the same name by David Storey, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award, it recounts the story of a rugby league footballer in Wakefield, a mining city in Yorkshire, whose romantic life is not as successful as his sporting life. Storey, a former professional rugby league footballer, also wrote the screenplay.
Rachel Roberts was a Welsh actress. She is best remembered for her screen performances as the older mistress of the central male characters in both Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and This Sporting Life (1963). For each, she won the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress. She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for This Sporting Life. Her other notable film appearances included Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Yanks (1979).
Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker and film critic, one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in British cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. Two of the best-known films he directed are Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), a classic of kitchen sink realism, and the romantic period drama The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981).
If.... is a 1968 British satirical drama film produced and directed by Lindsay Anderson, and starring Malcolm McDowell as the character Mick Travis who appeared in two further Anderson films. Other actors include Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, David Wood, and Robert Swann. A satire of English public school life, the film follows a group of pupils who stage a savage insurrection at a boys' boarding school. The film was the subject of controversy at the time of its release, receiving an X certificate for its depictions of violence.
The British New Wave is a style of films released in Great Britain between 1959 and 1963. The label is a translation of Nouvelle Vague, the French term first applied to the films of François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard among others.
Every Day Except Christmas is a 37-minute documentary film filmed in 1957 at the Covent Garden fruit, vegetable and flower market, which was at that point still in central London. It was directed by Lindsay Anderson and produced by Karel Reisz and Leon Clore under the sponsorship of Ford of Britain, the first of the company's "Look at Britain" series. It was filmed by Walter Lassally.
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.
Adrian Martin is an Australian film and arts critic. He now lives in Malgrat de Mar in Spain. He is Adjunct Associate Professor in Film Culture and Theory at Monash University. His work has appeared in many magazines, journals and newspapers around the world, and has been translated into over twenty languages and has regular columns in the Dutch De Filmkrant and in Caiman: Cuadernos de cine.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a 1960 British kitchen sink drama film directed by Karel Reisz and produced by Tony Richardson. It is an adaptation of the 1958 novel of the same name by Alan Sillitoe, with Sillitoe himself writing the screenplay. The plot concerns a young teddy boy machinist, Arthur, who spends his weekends drinking and partying, all the while having an affair with a married woman.
A Taste of Honey is a 1961 British New Wave drama film directed by Tony Richardson and starring Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan, Robert Stephens and Murray Melvin. It is an adaptation of the 1958 play of the same name by Shelagh Delaney. Delaney wrote the screenplay with Richardson, who had directed the original Broadway production of the play in 1960. As with the play, the film is an exemplar of a social realist genre of British media known as kitchen sink realism.
The White Bus is a 1967 British short drama film directed by Lindsay Anderson and starring Patricia Healey. The screenplay was jointly adapted with Shelagh Delaney from a short story in her collection Sweetly Sings the Donkey (1963). It was the film debut of Anthony Hopkins.
Together is a 1956 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." The two main characters are played by artists Eduardo Paolozzi and Michael Andrews, who were friends of the filmmaker. The film, produced by the British Film Institute Experimental Film Fund, was first shown as part of the first Free Cinema programme at the National Film Theatre in London in February 1956, along with Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz's Momma Don't Allow, and Lindsay Anderson's O Dreamland.
Sequence was a short-lived but influential British film journal founded in 1947 by Lindsay Anderson, Peter Ericsson, Gavin Lambert and Karel Reisz.
Stephen B. Grimes was an English production designer and art director. He won an Oscar and was nominated for two more in the category Best Art Direction.
Woodfall Film Productions was a British film production company established in the late 1950s. It was established by Tony Richardson, John Osborne and Harry Saltzman to make a screen adaptation of Osborne's hit play Look Back in Anger. The film version, directed by Richardson and produced by Saltzman, was released in 1959.
Silvion Oscar Lewenstein was a British theatre and film producer, who helped create some of the leading British theatre and film productions of the 1950s and 1960s.
Ride of the Valkyrie is a 1967 British short comedy film directed by Peter Brook and starring Julia Foster, Zero Mostel, and Frank Thornton.
