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John Grierson has a lot to answer for. Not only did he popularise that most dreary and off-putting term ‘documentary’ in the 1930s, he only approved those that were utilitarian, pedagogic or impersonal. But in the 1950s a new generation of filmmakers rejected these restrictive forms and a Free Cinema was born: an interest in the poetry of the everyday and a talent for finding art hiding in plain sight in unsung and unprepossessing neighbourhoods. Documentary to provoke change. No film can be too personal. An urgent cultural revolution was suddenly exploding everywhere. New York’s ‘off Broadway’ film movement, influenced by Italian neorealism, shot Little Fugitive (1953 Morris Engel/Ruth Orkin) on location on Coney Island. It was nominated for an Oscar. This landmark film led to John Cassavetes’ independent style and was an acknowledged influence on the French New Wave, Direct Cinema (U.S.) and Cinema Verite (France). As if on cue, Agnes Varda filmed La Pointe Courte (1955) on location in Sete, inventing and kick-starting the New Wave of Godard and Truffaut and her own Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962). However, the biggest stirring of a new kind of documentary impulse was the Free Cinema in Britain, where Lindsay Anderson scorned the Griersonian style as didactic and dull and led the way to the British New Wave’s ‘kitchen sink’ films that were about our lives.

Discover some key literary movements and novels that influenced the Italian cultural scene in the 19th century, through the study of three writers: Alessandro Manzoni, Giovanni Verga and Arrigo Boito.

This session takes place in the V&A’s remarkable collection. You will see a wide range of woven, printed, painted and embroidered cloth from around the globe and explore the roles these have played in the world’s material culture from about 1650 to the present.