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Origins and silent films
The first moving picture was shot in Leeds by Louis Le Prince in 1888 and the first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, who patented the process in 1890. The first people to build and run a working 35 mm camera in Britain were Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres. They made the first British film Incident at Clovelly Cottage in February 1895. -
The early sound period
John Maxwell founded British International Pictures (BIP) in 1927. One of the company's early films, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929), is often regarded as the first British sound feature. -
Second World War
Humphrey Jennings began his career as a documentary film maker just before the war, working in collaboration with co-directors. London Can Take It (with Harry Wat, 1940) detailed the blitz while Listen to Britain (with Stewart McAllister, 1942) looked at the home front. Many other films helped to shape the popular image of the nation at war. Among the best known of these films are In Which We Serve (1942), We Dive at Dawn (1943), Millions Like Us (1943) and The Way Ahead (1944). -
Post-war cinema
Among the most significant films produced during this period were David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) and his Dickens adaptations Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), Carol Reed's thrillers Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949), and Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). -
Social realism
The British New Wave film makers attempted to produce social realist films attempted in commercial feature films released between around 1959 and 1963 to convey narratives about a wider spectrum of people in Britain than the country's earlier films had done. These individuals, principally Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson, were also involved in the short lived Oxford film journal Sequence and the "Free Cinema" documentary film movement. -
The 1960s
American directors were regularly working in London throughout the decade, but several became permanent residents in the UK. Blacklisted in America, Joseph Losey had a significant influence on British cinema in the 1960s, particularly with his collaborations with playwright Harold Pinter and leading man Dirk Bogarde, including The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967). Voluntary exiles Richard Lester and Stanley Kubrick were also active in the UK. -
1970 to 1980
Films financed by American interests were still being made, including Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), but for a time funds became hard to come by. More relaxed censorship also brought several controversial films, including Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's Performance, Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971), and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) starring Malcolm McDowell as the leader of a gang of thugs. -
1980 to 1990
A generation of British directors emerged making popular films with international distribution. Hugh Hudson, Ridley Scott, Alan Parker, and Adrian Lyne — had shot commercials. When Hudson's Chariots of Fire (1981) won 4 Academy Awards in 1982, including Best Picture, its writer Colin Welland declared "the British are coming!". When Gandhi (1982), picked up a Best Picture Oscar, it looked as if he was right. -
1990 to 2000
Among the more successful British films were the Merchant Ivory productions Howards End (1992) and The Remains of the Day (1993), Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands (1993), and Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare adaptations. The Madness of King George (1994) proved there was still a market for British costume dramas, and other period films followed, including Sense and Sensibility (1995), Restoration (1995), Emma (1996), Mrs. Brown (1997), Basil (1998), Shakespeare in Love (1998). -
2000 to 2010
The new decade saw a major new film series in the US-backed but British-made Harry Potter films, beginning with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2001. David Heyman's company Heyday Films has produced seven sequels, with the final title released in two parts – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 in 2010 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011. All were filmed at Leavesden Studios in England. -
2010 to present
On 26 July 2010 it was announced that the UK Film Council would be abolished. Actors and professionals, including James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Pete Postlethwaite, Damian Lewis, Timothy Spall, Daniel Barber and Ian Holm, campaigned against the Council's abolition. At the closure of the UKFC in March 2011, The Guardian reported: "The UKFC's entire annual budget was a reported £3m, while the cost of closing it down and restructuring is estimated to have been almost four times that amount."
