Author Archives: Oliver Swithenbank

During the first half of the 20th century, Hollywood was dominating the film industry, producing many big hits. The UK’s film industry was well established during this period, not to the same extent as Hollywood, but enough to garner international attention, with many British films being made during the 1930’s. To combat Hollywood’s widening graspContinue reading “British Horror”

The Lord of the Rings has become one of the biggest film series of all time, with the total box office for the first 3 films set at nearly $3 billion and its influence on the film and even television industry being endless. These films were huge and to this day, they remain as theContinue reading “New Zealand Film”

Jan Svankmajer is a surrealist filmmaker and animator from the Czech Republic, formerly Czechoslovakia, with a career that spans over 55 years, with all his work between 1964 and 1988 being short films. At the start of his career, Czechoslovakia was under the Soviet Union’s control and with that came several hurdles Svankmajer had toContinue reading “Czech New Wave”

In 1995, two Danish filmmakers joined together for 45 minutes to form what would be the basis for one of cinema’s most transgressive and minimalistic movements. The two filmmakers in question, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, collectively decided that the current state of cinema was not good enough. That the films being released wereContinue reading “Dogme 95”