Free Cinema & Protest

In 1950's a protest to the dominance of mainstream is The British Free cinema movement of the 50's. Free cinema was black and white, documentary and had a fly on the wall type of style. Most films in free cinema were short, had unpaid crew, shoe string budgets and were usually filmed on a 16mm Bolex camera. The difference between the cameras is that a 35mm one is the industry standard, 16mm & 18mm are for home movies and 52mm is IMAX. So from this information in order to achieve a film in the style of a documentary, they would make it look like a home movie which in turn would make it look more realistic however meant that it was no where near to the industry's standard. These films had an experimental approach to sound and had a clear style and attitude and were funded by the BFI . BFI featured w/c people at work in society. Saturday Night was British New Wave along with We are The Lambeth Boys which was inspired by angry young men. Michael More would follow peoples lives and was interested in the way in which the working class lived. He wanted people to send videos in to him based on what people hated about society as he felt it had great appeal.

Little Film studies work has been done on the role of short film as an agent of social change.
-Video activism has symbolic relationship with short film.Meaning the relationship between the two is like the one between a mother and child.
-"Witness video" is a common strategy used by protest groups i.e hunting.