Lindsay Anderson

Infobox actor
name = Lindsay Anderson


birthdate = birth date|1923|04|17
birthplace = Bangalore, India
deathdate = Death date and age|1994|08|30|1923|05|17
deathplace = Angoulême, France
othername =
occupation = Film director
yearsactive = 1948 - 1993
imdb_id = 0000755

Lindsay Gordon Anderson (April 17 1923 — August 30 1994) was an Indian-born English feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for his 1968 film "if....", which won the Palme d'Or. Of Scottish descent, the son of a British Army officer, he was born in Bangalore, South India, and educated at Cheltenham College, where he met his lifelong friend and biographer, the screenwriter and novelist Gavin Lambert; and later at Wadham College, Oxford, where he studied classics, and Magdalen College, Oxford where he studied English literature.

Career

After graduating, Anderson worked for the final year of the Second World War as a cryptographer for the Intelligence Corps, at the Wireless Experimental Centre in Delhi.

Before going into film-making, Anderson was a prominent film critic writing for the influential "Sequence" magazine (1947-52), which he co-founded with Gavin Lambert and Karel Reisz; later writing for the British Film Institute's journal "Sight and Sound" and the left-wing political weekly the "New Statesman". In one of his early and most well-known polemical pieces, "Stand Up, Stand Up", he outlined his theories of what British cinema should become.

Anderson developed an acquaintance from 1950 with John Ford, which led to what has come to be regarded as one of the standard books on that director, Anderson's "About John Ford" (1983). Based on half a dozen meetings over more than two decades, and a lifetime's study of the man's work, the book has been described as "One of the best books published by a film-maker on a film-maker". [David Castell, "Daily Telegraph", cited on back cover of UK paperback edition] As seen in his writings, another major influence was Humphrey Jennings, the great wartime documentary film maker.

Following a series of screenings which he organized at the National Film Theatre of independently-produced short films by himself, Karel Reisz and others, he developed a philosophy of cinema which found expression in what became known as the Free Cinema Movement in Britain by the late-1950s. This was the belief that the cinema must break away from its class-bound attitudes and that the working classes ought to be seen on Britain's screens.

Along with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and others he secured funding from a variety of sources (including Ford of Britain) and they each made a series of socially challenging short documentaries on a variety of subjects.

These films, made in the tradition of British documentaries in the 1930s by such men as John Grierson, foreshadowed much of the social realism of British cinema which emerged in the 1960s with Anderson's own film "This Sporting Life", Reisz's "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", and Richardson's "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner".

One of Anderson's early short films, "Thursday's Child", won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 1954. Anderson reconnected with his roots as a documentary maker in 1985 when he was invited by producer Martin Lewis to chronicle the first-ever visit to China by Western pop artists Wham! resulting in Anderson's film "Foreign Skies: Wham! In China". [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206409/fullcredits Foreign Skies: Wham! In China] , imdb credits]

Anderson is best remembered for his "Mick Travis" trilogy of feature films, all of which star Malcolm McDowell as Travis: "If....", "O Lucky Man!" and "Britannia Hospital". Also in the trilogy Anderson insisted on using the British character actor Arthur Lowe, famous for playing Captain Mainwaring in the popular BBC sitcom "Dad's Army".

Anderson was also a significant British theatre director. He was long associated with London's Royal Court Theatre, where he was Co-Artistic Director 1969-70, and Associate Artistic Director 1971-75, directing premiere productions of plays by David Storey, among others.

In 1992, as a close friend of actress Jill Bennett, Anderson included a touching episode in his autobiographical BBC film "Is That All There Is?," with a boat trip down the River Thames (several of her professional colleagues and friends aboard) to scatter her ashes on the waters while musician Alan Price sang the song "Is That All There Is?."

Every year, International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam IDFA gives an acclaimed filmmaker the chance to screen his or her personal Top 10 favorite films. In 2007, Iranian filmmaker Maziar Bahari selected O Dreamland and Everyday Except Christmas for his top ten classics from the history of documentary. [3]

Theatre productions

All Royal Court, London, unless otherwise indicated:

* "The Waiting of Lester Abbs" (Kathleen Sully, 1957)
* "The Long and the Short and the Tall" (Willis Hal,1959)
* "Progress to the Park" (Alun Owen, 1959)
* "The Trial of Cob and Leach/Jazzetry" (Christopher Logue, 1959)
* "Serjeant Musgrave's Dance" (John Arden, 1959)
* "The Lily White Boys" (Harry Cookson and Christopher Logue, 1960)
* "" (Christopher Logue, 1960)
* "Diary of a Madman" (Gogol adaptation,1961)
* "Box and Cox" (John Maddison Morton, 1961)
* "The Fire Raisers" (Max Frisch, 1961)
* "Julius Caesar" (William Shakespeare, 1964)
* "Andorra" (Max Frisch, National Theatre at the Old Vic, 1964)
* "The Cherry Orchard" (Anton Chekhov, Chichester Festival Theatre, 1966
* "The Contractor" (David Storey, 1969)
* "Home" (David Storey, also Morosco Theatre NY, 1970)
* "The Changing Room" (David Storey, 1971)
* "The Farm" (David Storey, 1973)
* "Life Class" (David Storey, 1974)
* "In Celebration" (David Storey 1974)
* "What the Butler Saw" (Joe Orton, 1975)
* "The Seagull" (Anton Chekhov, Lyric Theatre, 1975); in repertory with
* "The Bed Before Yesterday" (Ben Travers, Lyric Theatre, 1975)
* "The Kingfisher" (William Douglas Home, Lyric Theatre 1977, Biltmore NY, 1978)
* "Alice's Boys" (Felicity Brown and Jonathan Hayes, Savoy Theatre, 1978)
* "Early Days" (David Storey, National Cottesloe Theatre, 1980)
* "The Holly and the Ivy" (Wynyard Browne, Roundabout NY, 1982)
* "The Cherry Orchard" (Anton Chekhov, Theatre Royal Haymarket, 1983)
* "The Playboy of the Western World" (J M Synge, 1984)
* "In Celebration" revival (David Storey, Manhattan Theatre Club, NY, 1984)
* "Holiday" (Philip Barry, Old Vic, 1987)
* "The March on Russia" (David Storey, National Lyttelton Theatre, 1989)
* "The Fishing Trip" (Frank Grimes, Warehouse Theatre, 1991)
* "Stages" (David Storey, National Cottesloe Theatre, 1992)

Sources:

* 25 Years of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court, Richard Findlater (ed) Amber Lane Press 1981. ISBN 090639922X
* , Otis L Guernsey Jr, Applause 1987 ISBN 0936839236
* Theatre Record and Theatre Record indexes
* Who's Who in the Theatre(various editions) for both Lindsay Anderson's CV and the Playbill listings

Filmography

* "This Sporting Life" (1963)
* "The White Bus" (1967)
* "If...." (1968)
* "O Lucky Man!" (1973)
* "In Celebration" (1975)
* "Britannia Hospital" (1982)
* "The Whales of August" (1987)

Documentary and TV

* "Meet the Pioneers" (1948)
* "Idlers that Work" (1949)
* "Three Installations" (1951)
* "Wakefield Express" (1952)
* "Thursday's Children" (1953)
* "O Dreamland" (1953)
* "Truck Conveyor" (1954)
* "Foot and Mouth" (1955)
* "A Hundred Thousand Children" (1955)
* "The Children Upstairs" (1955)
* "Green and Pleasant Land" (1955)
* "Henry" (1955)
* "£20 a Ton" (1955)
* "Energy First" (1955)
* "Every Day Except Christmas" (1957)
* "March to Aldermaston" (1959)
* "The Singing Lesson" (1967)
* "Home - (Film version of play)" (1971)
* "The Old Crowd", screenplay by Alan Bennett (LWT, 1979)
* "" (also known as "If You Were There") (1985)
* "Glory! Glory!" (1989)
* "Is That All There Is?" (Autobiographical film for BBC, 1993) See also Jill Bennett.

References

Bibliography

* "About John Ford" (1983) ISBN 0-85965-014-6
* "The Diaries of Lindsay Anderson" ed. Paul Sutton (2004) ISBN 0-413-77397-3
* "Never Apologise: The Collected Writings of Lindsay Anderson" (2004) ISBN 0-85965-317-X

*SEE ALSO: [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/ukbib.html#anderson Lindsay Anderson Bibliography] (via UC Berkeley)

External links

* [http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1482435230 Lindsay Anderson - A Celebration]
*imdb name|id=0000755|name=Lindsay Anderson
* [http://www.lindsayanderson.com The Lindsay Anderson Memorial Foundation]
* [http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/o_dreamland.html Watch O Dreamland on FourDocs]
* [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/444789/index.html The BFI's "screenonline" on Free Cinema]
* [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/446941/ The BFI's "screenonline" for Lindsay Anderson]
* [http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/libraries/collections/anderson/index.php The Lindsay Anderson Archive at Stirling University, Scotland]

Persondata
NAME= Anderson, Lindsay
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Film director
DATE OF BIRTH= April 17, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH= Bangalore IND
DATE OF DEATH= August 30, 1994
PLACE OF DEATH= Angoulême FRA