Free Cinema | biographies

Lorenza Mazzetti (b. 1928)

Orphaned at a very young age, Lorenza Mazzetti was brought up by her aunt and uncle, along with their two daughters. On 3 August 1944, the SS killed her aunt and two cousins. Her uncle committed suicide a year later.

In the early 1950s, Mazzetti moved to London where she studied at the Slade School of Arts. On the strength of a short film she made at Slade, the bfi Experimental Film Fund awarded her the opportunity to make Together, the story of two deaf-mutes in East London. After its debut at the NFT Free Cinema Evening, Together went on to be screened at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Mazzetti moved to Rome in 1959, where continued to make TV programmes for RAI TV. In 1961, she published a novel, Il Cielo Cade ('The Sky Falls') based on her tragic childhood. Last year, the movie version was released in Italy to wide popular acclaim.

Lorenza Mazzetti took part in a panel discussion at the Free Cinema Event on 22 March 2001 at the NFT.

Karel Reisz (b. 1926 - 2002)

In 1938, Karel Reisz came to England as a refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. In the late 1950s Reisz contributed as a film critic in both Sequence and Sight & Sound. He went on to be the first programmer at the National Film Theatre in 1952. As a member of the original Free Cinema Event, Reisz co-directed with Tony Richardson the nightclub-scene documentary Momma Don't Allow. He later made We are the Lambeth Boys for the Look at Britain Free Cinema Event in 1957. By the time of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Reisz had become one of the leaders of the New Wave in British film-making. He has continued making acclaimed films, including Isadora (1968) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981).

Karel Reisz took part in a panel discussion at the Free Cinema Event on 22 March 2001 at the NFT.

Walter Lassally (b. 1926)

Born into the film business, Walter Lassally's father was an industrial film-maker in Berlin. When the family fled the Nazis in 1939, Lassally's father set up a film-unit in London. Lassally himself became a clapperboy for Riverside Studios. In 1956, Lassally teamed up with Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Gavin Lambert, and became the principal photographer for the Free Cinema Movement. In 1964, he won the Academy Award® (for his camera work on Zorba the Greek. He has worked with a number of directors, including Tony Richardson, Michael Cacoyannis, James Ivory and Arthur Penn. Lassally now shares time between Greece and England.

Walter Lassally took part in a panel discussion at the Free Cinema Event on 22 March 2001 at the NFT.

John Fletcher (c. 1932 - 1986)

John Fletcher was with Walter Lassally, the technician behind the Free Cinema films, working on both image and sound for Together and Nice Time and sound on Momma Don't Allow. Fletcher remained in the business after the Free Cinema movement, shooting both films and television commercials, and working as sound editor on Lindsay Anderson's The White Bus. He was appointed Director of Studies at the London International Film School, where he stayed until 1982.

Lindsay Anderson (1923 - 1994)

Along with Reisz and Richardson, one of the primary directors of the British New Wave films of the 1960s. Anderson started his film career as the editor of Sequence magazine, and later became a film critic for Sight & Sound. As a critic, Anderson showed an enthusiasm for directors like Ford, Jennings, and Vigo. Leader and theoretician of the Free Cinema Movement, he showed several of his documentaries in the Free Cinema programmes at the NFT (O Dreamland!, Wakefield Express, and Every Day Except Christmas). In 1963, Anderson's This Sporting Life heralded his move into feature film-making. He went on to make such seminal films as O Lucky Man! and If..., for which he won the 1968 Cannes Palme d'Or.

Tony Richardson (1928 - 1991)

A 1963 article in Film Comment described Tony Richardson as "the busiest Angry Man in Britain." Indeed, within ten years he was director for the BBC (1953), founder of the English Stage Company (1955), co-director with Reisz of original Free Cinema Event film Momma Don't Allow (1955), co-founder with John Osborne of Woodfall Productions (1958), director of five feature films (including Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey, and Tom Jones), and producer of Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Married at one time to actress Vanessa Redgrave, his film legacy continues through his daughters Natasha and Joely Richardson.