The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, distribution, and education. It is sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and partially funded under the British Film Institute Act 1949.
The Grove Family was a British television series soap opera, generally regarded as the first of its kind broadcast in the UK, made and broadcast by the BBC Television Service from 1954 to 1957. The series concerned the life of the family of the title, who were named after the BBC's Lime Grove Studios where the programme was made.
John E. Blakeley was a British film producer, director and screenwriter, the founder of Mancunian Films.
Sheila Susan White was an English film, television and stage actress.
Julia Foster is an English stage, screen, and television actress.
Penny Points to Paradise is a 1951 comedy feature film directed by Tony Young and starring Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers of The Goon Show in their feature film debut.
A Private Function is a 1984 British comedy film starring Michael Palin and Maggie Smith. The film was predominantly filmed in Ilkley, and Ben Rhydding in West Yorkshire. The film was also screened in the section of Un Certain Regard at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.
High Treason is a 1929 film based on a play by Noel Pemberton Billing. It was directed by Maurice Elvey, and stars James Carew, Humberstone Wright, Benita Hume, Henry Vibart, Hayford Hobbs, Irene Rooke, and Jameson Thomas. Raymond Massey makes his first screen appearance in a small role. The film was initially produced as a silent but mid-way during production, Elvey was pushed by the studio to add sound to the film in order to cash in on the talkies. Although a third of the film was filmed in sound, Elvey maintained much of the silent footage and dubbed over the dialogue for shots that were originally silent, with Elvey himself voicing some of the minor characters, which he admitted when interviewed by the Manitoba Free Press shortly after the film was released in the US. Likewise, BIP's Blackmail, directed by Alfred Hitchcock was also turned into a sound picture mid-way during production and many of the silent scenes used dubbed dialogue and sound effects in a similar fashion to High Treason.
Jane Arden was a British film director, actress, singer/songwriter and poet, who gained note in the 1950s. Born in Pontypool, Monmouthshire, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She started acting in the late 1940s and writing for stage and television in the 1950s. In the 1960s, she joined movements for feminism and anti-psychiatry. She wrote a screenplay for the film Separation (1967). In the late 1960s and 1970s, she wrote for experimental theatre, adapting one work as a self-directed film, The Other Side of the Underneath (1972). In 1978 she published a poetry book. Arden committed suicide in 1982. In 2009, her feature films Separation (1967), The Other Side of the Underneath (1972) and Anti-Clock (1979) were restored by the British Film Institute and released on DVD and Blu-ray. Her literary works are out of print.
Penny Slinger, sometimes Penelope Slinger, is a British-born American artist and author based in California. As an artist, she has worked in different mediums, including photography, film and sculpture. Her work has been described as being in the genres of surrealism and feminist surrealism. Her work explores the nature of the self, the feminine and the erotic.
Sheila Allen was an English actress, who was best known to the wider public for her role on television as Cassie Manson in Bouquet Of Barbed Wire and its sequel Another Bouquet (1976–77). From 1966 to 1978, Allen was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Piccadilly Incident is a 1946 British drama film directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding, Coral Browne, Edward Rigby and Leslie Dwyer.
Madness of the Heart is a 1949 British drama film directed by Charles Bennett, produced by Richard Wainwright for Two Cities Films and starring Margaret Lockwood, Maxwell Reed, Kathleen Byron and Paul Dupuis. The screenplay was written by Charles Bennett, adapted from the novel of the same name by Flora Sandström.
The Third Alibi is a 1961 British 'B' thriller film directed by Montgomery Tully and starring Laurence Payne, Patricia Dainton, Jane Griffiths and Edward Underdown. The screenplay is by Maurice J. Wilson and Tully, based on the play A Moment of Blindness by Pip and Jane Baker.
Sailors Three is a 1940 British war comedy film directed by Walter Forde and starring Tommy Trinder, Claude Hulbert and Carla Lehmann. This was cockney music hall comedian Trinder's debut for Ealing, the studio with which he was to become most closely associated. It concerns three British sailors who accidentally find themselves aboard a German ship during the Second World War.
Bleak Moments is a 1971 British comedy-drama film by Mike Leigh in his directorial debut. Leigh's screenplay is based on a 1970 stage play at the Open Space Theatre, about the dysfunctional life of a young secretary.
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 said in a 2005 interview: "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."
"In Two Minds" is a television play by David Mercer commissioned for The Wednesday Play anthology drama series. First transmitted on 1 March 1967, it was directed by Ken Loach and produced by Tony Garnett and features Anna Cropper in the lead role.
ITV Sunday Night Theatre, originally titled ITV Saturday Night Theatre and often shortened to simply Sunday Night Theatre or Saturday Night Theatre, is a British television anthology series screened on ITV, whose episodes were contributed by various companies in the ITV network.
Kenneth Charles Loach is a British film director and screenwriter. His socially critical directing style and socialism are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty, homelessness, and labour rights.
