Loving the aliens : outsiders, foreigners and uprooted characters in short and experimental British films

This thesis studies seven films shot in London in the 1950s by foreign-born directors. The Italian Lorenza Mazzetti, the Hungarian Robert Vas, the Egyptian Nazli Nour and the English (but Indian-born) Lindsay Anderson developed, through these works, their personal view on ‘otherness’. Lorenza Mazzetti’s K (1953) and Together (1956) are variations on the character of the outsider, directed with an experimental style and influenced by existentialism. Alone With the Monsters (1958), by Nazli Nour, sees an outcast being judged and laughed at by monstrous people – that are all in her head. Robert Vas’ Refuge England (1959), narrates a refugee’s first impact with the city of London, his search for a place to stay and his attempts to decipher the English language and society. Lindsay Anderson’s O Dreamland (1953) and Every Day Except Christmas (1957) define Anderson’s aesthetic and political stance, which will be fully developed in The White Bus (1967), en experimental, surreal and Brechtian tale in which a young Girl is alienated in an urban context to which she does not belong.