O Dreamland

O Dreamland
Opening title card
Directed by Lindsay Anderson
Cinematography John Fletcher
Release date
  • 1953 (1953)
Running time
 12 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English

O Dreamland is a 1953 documentary short film by British film director Lindsay Anderson.[1]

The documentary was made in 1953 by Anderson and his cameraman/assistant, John Fletcher, using a single 16mm camera and an audiotape recorder. Once completed, the film was initially shelved, with Anderson commenting, "you don't do anything with a 10-minute, 16-millimetre film. It's just there, that's all." In 1956 however, he was inspired to include it as part of the first Free Cinema programme.[2]

The black-and-white film is a 12-minute exploration of the Dreamland funfair in Margate, Kent and has no commentary but is accompanied by background noises and music.[3][4]

Gavin Lambert, a key supporter of the Free Cinema movement, said of the film "Everything is ugly... It is almost too much. The nightmare is redeemed by the point of view, which, for all the unsparing candid camerawork and the harsh, inelegant photography, is emphatically humane. Pity, sadness, even poetry is infused into this drearily tawdry, aimlessly hungry world."[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "O Dreamland (1953)".
  2. ↑ "BFI Screenonline: O Dreamland (1956)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  3. ↑ "O Dreamland (1953)". 7 January 1953.
  4. ↑ "Arts: The British Free Cinema movement". 22 March 2001 – via www.theguardian.com.
  5. ↑ Pizzichini, Lilian (2007-03-27). "How well does film explore Britishness? Lilian Pizzichini goes to the British Film Institutes Mediatheque". socialaffairsunit.org.
  6. ↑ Hedling, Erik; Dupin, Christophe (14 June 2016). "Lindsay Anderson Revisited: Unknown Aspects of a Film Director". Springer – via Google Books.
  7. ↑ BFI, Source: (16 April 2012). "Listen to Britain: watch a clip from Humphrey Jennings's short film - video" – via www.theguardian.com.


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