Free Cinema at the NFT

22 March 2001

In February 1956, more than two years before the French New Wave and thirty-nine years before Dogme 95, a group of young film-makers launched their Manifesto at the NFT. They named the programme 'Free Cinema' and took their cameras out onto the streets, capturing a new naturalistic and unscripted look at England. It made such an impact that 400 filmgoers were turned away from the first screening. Forty-five years later, we were extremely pleased to welcome to the NFT those who took part in a crucial moment in British cinema history, and to revisit their films.

Lindsay Anderson defined the genre as "independent, personal and poetic" and in a published manifesto the aims of Free Cinema were summed up as: "Implicit in our attitude is a belief in freedom, in the importance of people and the significance of the everyday." The humanist ideals of the Free Cinema programmes helped to steer British commercial cinema in the direction of socially controversial subjects, with contemporary problems set against working class backgrounds. They led to powerful features such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) directed by Karel Reisz and This Sporting Life (1963) produced by Reisz and directed by Lindsay Anderson. The legacy of Free Cinema continues to inspire and its poetic brand of gritty realism is seen today in the films of Ken Loach and Lynne Ramsay's directorial debut Ratcatcher (1999).

Complete transcript of the evening

Programme

• O Dreamland 1953/ Dir. Lindsay Anderson
• Momma Don't Allow 1956/ Dirs. Karel Reisz/Tony Richardson
• Together 1956/ Dir. Lorenza Mazzetti
• Nice Time 1957/ Dirs. Alain Tanner/Claude Goretta

The screening was followed by a panel discussion with the surviving film-makers, Karel Reisz, Lorenza Mazzetti, Claude Goretta, Walter Lassally, chaired by Kevin MacDonald.