In Conversation – Lindsay Anderson and Mamoun Hassan

In May 1973, just after the release of Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man, London University Audio Visual (LUAV) filmed a conversation/interview with Lindsay Anderson and me. O Lucky Man was the focus of the interview, which was part of an LUAV planned series of interviews with leading figures of the time. The results would be kept in a kind of time capsule and would not be released until fifty or a hundred years later. The project was abandoned early on.

Panel discussion on Lindsay Anderson at the BFI Southbank, curated by David Somerset

Mamoun Hassan appeared recently at the British Film Institute’s Seniors talk on the work of  film, television and stage director, critic and actor Lindsay Anderson (1923 – 1994) at the National Film Theatre, Southbank, London March 14 2016. The panel event was curated by David Somerset, Adult Community Education Programmer. Filmed by Sherief Hassan and edited by David Somerset. The video opens with a clip from ‘Free Cinema 1956 – ?’An Essay on film by Lindsay Anderson (1985).

Lindsay Anderson panel discussion, BFI Southbank from david somerset on Vimeo.

Mamoun writes

Nowadays Lindsay Anderson, if he is remembered at all, is equally loved and disliked by film makers, film critics and writers. Not so in the late 50s, 60s and 70s. He was almost wholly admired not only for his films and theatre work but also for his writings on cinema, which were incendiary. Of course, he had his detractors, who often belonged to the establishment: the successful, the comfortable, the conformist, the smug and the paralysed conservatives. He argued and carried the flame for an authentic British cinema. He influenced a whole generation of film makers and critics. He was cerebral, emotional, provocative, censorious, intimidating, generous, inspiring. Never before had a British film director spoken with such clarity about what we should make films about and how we might make them – about style. Critics tend to belabour the genre, as if audiences can’t tell the difference between a hand and a hacksaw, between a musical and a thriller. They avoid the responsibility that Lindsay stressed: that good cinema grows out of good criticism – not of Hollywood ‘product’ but of our own films. Passion and insight start at home.

Legendary film critic David Robinson, chairman of the Lindsay Anderson Memorial Foundation, chairs a panel consisting of Kevin Brownlow, director, writer, editor and Oscar-winning film historian, Charles Drazin, author and film critic, Andrew Eaton, film producer, and me. We speak of the man we knew and sometimes worked with and of his films.

Mamoun Hassan

 

 

Introduction to ‘This Sporting Life’

Mamoun was invited by David Somerset, education curator at the British Film Institute, to introduce a screening of Lindsay Anderson‘s ‘This Sporting Life‘ at the National Film Theatre in London on 6th August 2012.

The event wasn’t filmed, but we have created this short video to accompany the audio recording made on the day.

Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave. Wikipedia

Copyright©Mamoun Hassan 2012