Sequence (journal)

Last updated

Sequence was a short-lived but influential British film journal founded in 1947 by Lindsay Anderson, Peter Ericsson, Gavin Lambert and Karel Reisz.

Anderson had returned to Oxford after his time with the army Intelligence Corps in Delhi. Ericsson was at New College, Oxford and had been a senior codebreaker in the Testery section at Bletchley Park during World War II. [1] He was International Secretary of the British Labour Party 1955–1958. [2] [3] Lambert was a schoolfriend of Anderson from Cheltenham College who had dropped out of English at Magdalen College on discovering that he would have to study Middle English under C. S. Lewis, while Reisz was a chemistry graduate from Emmanuel College, Cambridge who later said "I met Lindsay Anderson on a Green Line bus. I was going to the British Film Institute to look at some film for my editing book, and he was going to see Ford's The Iron Horse ." [4]

Founded as the Film Society Magazine, the organ of the Oxford Film Society, in 1947, with Penelope Houston as its first editor, the journal quickly changed its name to Sequence, and produced fourteen issues between 1947 and 1952, the last few being edited by Reisz and Anderson. [4] The British Free Cinema movement, co-founded in 1956 by Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza Mazzetti, drew on the principles first expressed by the journal. Articles from Sequence by Anderson were published in Lindsay Anderson: The Collected Writings edited by Paul Ryan (London: Plexus, 2004).[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cinema of the United Kingdom</span> Overview of the cinema of the United Kingdom

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, Glynis Johns, Maggie Smith, Roger Moore, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Joan Collins, Judi Dench, Julie Andrews, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gary Oldman, Emma Thompson, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lindsay Anderson</span> British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, and film critic

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 "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer whose career spanned five decades. In 1964, he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Tom Jones.

<i>This Sporting Life</i> 1963 British film

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, Frank Machin, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karel Reisz</span> British filmmaker

Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker, 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).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humphrey Jennings</span> British documentary filmmaker (1907–1950)

Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings was an English documentary filmmaker and one of the founders of the Mass Observation organisation. Jennings was described by film critic and director Lindsay Anderson in 1954 as "the only real poet that British cinema has yet produced".

Sight and Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade Sight and Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing since 1952.

Gavin Lambert was a British-born screenwriter, novelist and biographer who lived for part of his life in Hollywood. His writing was mainly fiction and nonfiction about the film industry.

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.

<i>Every Day Except Christmas</i> 1957 British film

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.

<i>O Dreamland</i> 1953 short film by Lindsay Anderson

O Dreamland is a 1953 documentary short film by British film director Lindsay Anderson.

Penelope Houston was an English film critic and journal editor. She edited Sight & Sound for almost 35 years.

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.

<i>Momma Dont Allow</i> 1956 British film

Momma Don't Allow is a short British documentary film of 1956 about a show of the Chris Barber band with Ottilie Patterson in a north London trad jazz club - specifically the Fisherman's Arms in Wood Green. The film features skip jiving by the audience.

<i>Saturday Night and Sunday Morning</i> (film) 1960 British film

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, who also wrote the screenplay adaptation. The film is about a young teddy boy machinist, Arthur, who spends his weekends drinking and partying, all the while having an affair with a married woman.

Tom Priestley is a British film and sound editor, whose career spans from 1961 to 1990.

<i>Together</i> (1956 film) 1956 British film

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Grigsby</span> British filmmaker

Michael Kenneth Christian Grigsby was an English documentary filmmaker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thorold Dickinson</span>

Thorold Barron Dickinson was a British film director, screenwriter, film editor, film producer, and Britain's first university professor of film. Dickinson's work received much praise, with fellow director Martin Scorsese describing him as "a uniquely intelligent, passionate artist... They're not in endless supply."

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.

References

  1. Eavesdropping on Adolph Hitler: Deciphering the daily messages in the Tunny cipher, 2013 by Ian Mayo-Smith
  2. The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? 2013 By Hugh Wilford
  3. Lindsay Anderson Foundation website
  4. 1 2 Tom Vallance Obituary: Karel Reisz, The Independent , 28 November 2002