{"id":879663,"date":"2026-09-01T16:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T16:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/879663\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T16:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T16:34:09","slug":"not-just-hollywood-crap-mike-leigh-on-the-east-end-communist-who-brought-world-cinema-to-the-uk-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/879663\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Not just Hollywood crap\u2019: Mike Leigh on the East End communist who brought world cinema to the UK | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally, vital pieces of the cultural jigsaw disappear without anyone really noticing. This, sadly, was the fate of Contemporary Films, the British film distributor that popularised sophisticated, grownup international cinema \u2013 foreign language mostly \u2013 in the UK, and heralded the arrival of the auteur generation with directors such as Ingmar Bergman<\/a>, Satyajit Ray, Andrzej Wajda and Yasujiro Ozu.<\/p>\n

Contemporary, and its founder Charles Cooper, weren\u2019t the only game in town \u2013 Kenneth Rive\u2019s Gala<\/a> was a fellow traveller \u2013 but Contemporary got there first, setting up shop in 1951, first with short films for the then popular film society sector, and moving into features with the 1952 Japanese film Children of Hiroshima<\/a>. Its marketplace clout faded rapidly in the early 1990s, when it was a victim of changing industry practices. But amazingly, the company is still with us \u2013 and is planning a 75th anniversary series of screenings<\/a> to showcase its history.<\/p>\n

Charles Cooper. Photograph: Contemporary\u00a0Films<\/p>\n

Such is Contemporary\u2019s lustre that, along with screenings of films such as Milo\u0161 Forman\u2019s A Blonde in Love, Bergman\u2019s Wild Strawberries and Jack Hazan\u2019s David Hockney documentary A Bigger Splash, the great and good are turning out in support, led by Mike Leigh<\/a>, whose feature film directing debut, Bleak Moments, was picked up by Contemporary in 1971. \u201cIt was a great honour,\u201d Leigh says. \u201cOne was used to seeing \u2018Contemporary Films\u2019 on all the movies one saw that weren\u2019t just Hollywood crap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bleak Moments, a studiedly funny and weird film based on Leigh\u2019s own stage play, is about a woman living an isolated life with a sister with a learning disability and a boring job. It was financed by Albert Finney, still riding high on his 1960s acting successes. As a homegrown, off-kilter feature, it was a slightly unusual item for Contemporary to pick up. \u201cWe were fresh on the block and innocent,\u201d says Leigh, \u201cand you take everything for granted in some way. But actually, when you think about it, they were pretty remarkable and they embraced this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now a Palme d\u2019Or and Golden Lion winner, Leigh undoubtedly understands the impact the company had on his own development. But it is its effect on the wider culture, the openness and cosmopolitanism that Contemporary helped to foster, that is arguably its most important contribution. \u201cI grew up in Manchester,\u201d says Leigh, \u201cand I saw movies all the time, but I never saw a film that wasn\u2019t in English. I saw only Hollywood and British movies. So when I came to London, world cinema suddenly presented itself. I have recollections of seeing Russian films, Italian neorealism, you name it. It was all going on, and Contemporary was very much at the centre of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s office in Soho, London, in 1969. Photograph: Contemporary\u00a0Films<\/p>\n

Cooper, the driving force behind it all, was an East End Jew \u2013 the son of a butcher from Ukraine \u2013 and a committed communist who saw cinema as a way to build awareness. Before the second world war, he brought Soviet films to the UK via Kino, the film section of the Workers\u2019 Theatre Movement<\/a>, then spent the war in New York running a film section for the International Workers Order<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Deported from the US in 1950, Cooper set about supplying films to hungry fans in film societies, of which there were an estimated 200 across Britain. The increasing interest in foreign \u201cart\u201d films meant Cooper was in tune with the intellectual times, with his special interest in eastern European and underclass-oriented films.<\/p>\n

Part of Cooper\u2019s strength, it seems, was his devotion to family life and willingness to involve his children in his day-to-day. His daughters from his first marriage agree. Adi Cooper, now a board member of Social Work England, says: \u201cCharles was in the right place at the right time in terms of capturing a market for the sort of films he was interested in, which branched out from political ones into what you would now call, I guess, arthouse cinema. He was prepared to take a risk on people who were unheard of here at the time, some of whom went on to have a much wider appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018There wasn\u2019t much separation between work and home\u2019 \u2026 Charles and Kitty Cooper with Satyajit and Bijoya Ray. Photograph: Contemporary\u00a0Films<\/p>\n

Her twin, Sue Cooper, a founder member of 1970s punk act Poison Girls<\/a>, says: \u201cThere wasn\u2019t much separation between work and home with Charles. He really was passionate about film and politics, and he was very motivated to expose people\u2019s thinking to different cultures. He was basically an internationalist and a humanist.\u201d They regale me with anecdotes about screenings in the basement of their Wembley home (\u201cThe room is crammed full of people! I\u2019m two feet from the back wall gazing up at this film called Alexander Nevsky\u201d) to messing about in the school holidays at the company\u2019s Frith Street office (\u201cpasting press cuttings into scrapbooks and getting seven and sixpence for three hours\u2019 work\u201d).<\/p>\n

Also key to Contemporary\u2019s success was the relationship Cooper nurtured with George Hoellering, the Hungarian \u00e9migr\u00e9 who ran the celebrated Academy cinema on London\u2019s Oxford Street which, throughout the 1950s and 60s, was the flagship venue for these kind of films. \u201cThey were joined at the hip,\u201d says Pete Lawley, Contemporary\u2019s current managing director. \u201cThey were the gold standard of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contemporary acquired some of the key indie films of the 90s, including Hal Hartley\u2019s The Unbelievable Truth with Julia McNeal and Adrienne Shelly. Photograph: Electric\/Kobal\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Hoellering died in 1984, by which time Cooper had his own cinemas: the Paris Pullman and Phoenix cinema in London and another Phoenix in Oxford. Lawley, who came on board in 2023, outlines Contemporary\u2019s decline: as Cooper\u2019s health began to fail in the late 1980s, he passed control to his second wife, Kitty Furstenberg, who in turn sold it on to their friend Eric Liknaitzky, who died in 2023<\/a>. Although Contemporary did acquire some of the key indies of the late 80s and early 1990s, including Patricia Rozema\u2019s I\u2019ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, Jane Campion\u2019s Sweetie and Hal Hartley\u2019s The Unbelievable Truth, it seems the shift to home entertainment formats in the 90s passed Contemporary by. Instead it stuck to occasional re-releases of tried and tested classics from their archive.<\/p>\n

Lawley says Contemporary has kept going by licensing clips from their catalogue; he has been sorting through the copious company documentation and says he is now working on plans for the future. \u201cIt\u2019s very important to me,\u201d he says. \u201cI really want to keep it going. It can\u2019t be about the money, let\u2019s put it that way. It may be small, but there\u2019s something worthwhile to build upon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contemporary 75<\/a> is at the BFI Southbank, London, from 3 September to 11 October, beginning with a screening of Bleak Moments<\/a> and Mike Leigh in conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Occasionally, vital pieces of the cultural jigsaw disappear without anyone really noticing. This, sadly, was the fate of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-879663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}