The Origin, Practice and Meaning of the Free Cinema Manifesto

In the late 1940s, the independent film quarterly Sequence, which championed a personal, committed cinema, stood for an attitude towards film-making that provided an important basis for the development of the Free Cinema movement in the following decade. It was in Sequence that the phrase ‘Free Cinema’ was coined for the first time. This article traces the early development of the Free Cinema ethos in Sequence magazine and follows the steps by which the idea was turned into reality. It singles out Lindsay Anderson as the most influential figure in both the genesis and direction of the movement. After its formal end in 1959, Free Cinema lived on most obviously in the British New Wave of the 1960s, but its characteristics defied easy analysis. Discussing the legacy of the Free Cinema, the article explores its contradictory, subjective nature and examines the dominant role that Anderson continued to play in determining how it came to be understood.