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The other side of the Sixties
Rob Young on an alternative canon of forgotten films exploring the sexual and moral shifts of post-war Britain
The Bad Sitting Room
Richard Lester; UK 1969; BFI Flipside/ Region 2; 91 minutes; Certificate 12; Aspect Ratio 1.85:1; Features: archival Interviews with Richard Lester, Spike Milligan and Peter Cook, booklet essay by Michael Brooke
London In the Raw
Arnold Louis Miller; UK 1964; BFI Flipside/ Region 2; 76 minutes; Certificate 15; Aspect Ratio 1.33:1; Features: 'Pub', 'Strip', 'Chelsea Bridge Boys', booklet essay by Stewart Home
Primitive London
Arnold Louis Miller; UK 1965; BFI Flipside/ Region 2; 67 minutes; Certificate 15; Aspect Ratio 1.33:1; Features: 'Carousella', Interviews, booklet essay by lain Sinclair, Will Fowler and Vic Pratt
In certain underground quarters there's evidence of a groundswell of interest in the flipside of British film and television culture. A samizdat group of psychogeographers calling themselves English Heretic recently installed a 'black plaque' at the last resting place of Witchfinder General director Michael Reeves. The remarkable rehabilitation in recent years of The Wicker Man which gathers in all the desirably macabre elements of Britain's folk culture - is a central plank of an alternative, even occult canon of 'forgotten' work from the 1960s and 1970s that bucked the abiding view of British cinema as parochial, 'literary' rather than cinematic, and sentimental. It's a broad spectrum taking in Alan Clarke's Penda'sFen and Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape; the more creative end...