Short film history-20th January

PROTEST AND FREE CINEMA

The Free cinema movement came in the 1950's resulting from a protest to the supremacy of mainstream. After the Second World War, conventional films were still being created, until the mid 1950's where Liz Anderson, Karl Reisz and Tony Richardson founded the Free cinema movement. Initially, there was 6 short programmes of short documentaries which were shown at the National Film Theatre between February 1956-March 1959. They were put together by young film creators. Due to problems of getting their work out, they decided to come together. Although the documentaries were made individually, there was a similar style that each documentary shared. The six films were funded by the BFI Experimental film fund, created in 1952.

Free cinema mainly looked at the class system, especially the working class, and drew attention to the problems some people were suffering in that day and age.They featured working class people at work and also in society. Most of the films from the Free cinema movement are short film and have a shoe string budget. The crew were usually unpaid, and the footage is usually shot with a 16mm Bolex camera, creating an 'home movie' effect.

'We are the Lambeth Boys,' 1959 by Karl Reisz, explores a group of young working class teenagers at work, school and with their friendship group, usually in a club.





SHORT FILM ON TV

In the 1960's and 70's, TV provided some small viewing of short films. They were scheduled into 'Filler,' which is when short films are used to either fill in small gaps like an interlude, or if a live broadcast was suffering from technical difficulties, a short film would be used, 'filling' the amount of time needed to fix the problem. In the 1990's, BBC2 series 10 x 10 in association with the BFI, started to showcase short film. Then, later in 1993, the BBC launched 'Video Nation,' which is a mass observation. One of the noticeable techniques used when filming, is the use of close up shots, establishing the persons facial expressions. The video diary was to influence the generation of reality TV online in 2001. From this point, video camera's started to become less expensive, and more small and compact, making it easier to get hold of and allowing more people to make video's like similar to the one's on Video Nation.