Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Anderson was an English filmmaker, critic, and stage director who helped lead the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave. Born in Bangalore, India, in 1923 and educated at Oxford, he co-founded the influential magazine Sequence and worked as a prominent film critic before turning to directing. An early short, Thursday's Children, about the schooling of deaf children, earned an Academy Award for best documentary short in 1954, and This Sporting Life followed in 1963. He was best known for his three satirical films starring Malcolm McDowell: if.... (1968), which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and brought him a BAFTA nomination, O Lucky Man! (1973), and Britannia Hospital (1982). He also directed for the theater, serving as co-artistic director of London's Royal Court Theatre from 1969 and staging premieres of plays by David Storey, and he acted in films such as Chariots of Fire (1981) and Blame It on the Bellboy (1992). He died in 1994.