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Film THE FESTIVAL OF NEW BRITISH CINEMA CHANGING THE GUARD SEPTEMBER 14-29, 1999 $6 ($3 WALKER MEMBERS) AUDITORIUM MEMBERS PAY HALF PRICE! 
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Kicked off in 1996 by Trainspotting and mainstreamed by the international success of Bean and The Full Monty the following year, New British Cinema emerged at the end of 18 years of Conservative government and the election of New Labour. In 1997, riding an unmistakable sense of national revival and confidence, a new generation of British filmmakers arrived at center stage, drawing energy and momentum from the pervasive cultural ferment of the mid-1990s manifested in such diverse phenomena as Britpop, the Young British Artists scene, and New Lad culture.
The key films in this new wave--Under the Skin, Nil by Mouth, and TwentyFourSeven--are the stylistic and spiritual progeny of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. Though the docudrama-naturalist tradition (invariably termed "gritty") is New British Cinema's ground zero, reflected here in films like The Scar and The Girl with Brains in Her Feet, that's not the whole story. Some filmmakers have refracted this style through genre (Face is a heist movie, Urban Ghost Story a horror film, Divorcing Jack is a comedic conspiracy thriller). Others, such as John Maybury (Love Is the Devil) and Richard Kwietniowski (Love and Death on Long Island), have reacted against it with a stylized personal vision manifested by Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway, Nicholas Roeg, Ken Russell, and Michael Powell. That strand is represented here by films like Gallivant, Mojo, and Robinson in Space.
Nineties British film has also advanced in several other respects: the emergence of distinctive regional voices like Shane Meadows in Nottingham, the Amber Collective in Tyneside, and Peter Mullan in Scotland; and of a strong cadre of women directors, including Antonia Bird (Priest), Carine Adler (Under the Skin), Sandra Goldbacher (The Governess), and upcoming talents Lynne Ramsay and Sara Sugarman. The explosion of short filmmaking in Britain in the early 1990s has fueled the new talent boom, with the British Film Institute's annual New Directors shorts program, the most notable springboard for a new generation of filmmakers.
This series, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and curated by Gavin Smith and Kent Jones, presents a selection of some of the most vital and distinctive new cinema of the past few years, work that has been overlooked by American distributors searching for the next Four Weddings and a Funeral.
CHANGING THE GUARD IS COPRESENTED BY PROACTIVE, WITH MAJOR SUPPORT FROM THE BRITISH COUNCIL.