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 free cinema
The 50s British film movement makes a comeback. When it emerged in the 50s, Free Cinema wasn’t a “movement” as such. No initial manifesto was drawn up to dictate a style, no filmmakers banded together with a common cause. It happened when four directors - Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and Lorenza Mazzetti – were having trouble getting their documentaries shown. Reisz was, handily, programmer at the NFT at the time so, using the Free Cinema banner and mission statement (“free” meaning not made within the studio system) for publicity purposes, they drummed up quite a crowd and a lot of press coverage. Although the films were all conceived separately, a thread runs through them, both in terms of their low-budget style and their engagement with social commentary. Their first programme of shorts, Free Cinema 1, brought together Anderson’s O Dreamland, Reisz and Richardson’s Momma Don’t Allow, and Mazzetti’s Together, all of which examined the working classes at a time when films focused on the south to the exclusion of the rest of British culture. Anderson’s trip through Margate’s Dreamland theme park raises questions about a mind-numbing consumer society, while Momma Don’t Allow is a lot warmer, looking at the youth culture around Wood Green Jazz Club, where teddy boys and their girls go to dance to the Chris Barber Quartet. Together is a fictional account of two deaf mutes in the East End, working the docks in a London that’s bombed out and grimy, where kids run amok and pubs serve warm ale.  There were five more Free Cinema programmes over three years - the two other British ones are included in these DVDs - along with some films inspired by but not included in the original programmes. Eventually the filmmakers put an end to Free Cinema to avoid turning it into a cliché, but its legacy lived on into the 60s with the British New Wave, as well as television documentary. These films stand up to viewing today as truthful observations on a society that no longer exists, putting across their ideas with some striking innovation in sound and imagery. We’re still trying to escape from a cinema which churns out identikit films, and these give us some idea of how it’s done.
Laura Bushell
Free Cinema Box Set (Three Discs), released 13 March 06 on BFI Video.
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comment by fourdocs
Mar 23, 2006
You can see some of these films for zero pence right now - go to http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/a_to_z.ht... and you'll be able to watch O Dreamland, We are The Lambeth boys and Momma Don't Allow, plus lots of other goodies, old and new. They truly are amazing and revolutionary documentary films. Really is free cinema...
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