Sequence was a short-lived but influential British film journal founded in 1947 by Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...

, Gavin Lambert

Gavin Lambert

Gavin Lambert was a British-born screenwriter, novelist and biographer who lived for part of his life in Hollywood...

 and Karel Reisz

Karel Reisz

Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema.-Early life:...

.

Anderson had returned to Oxford after his time with the army Intelligence Corps in Delhi

Delhi

Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

, Lambert was a schoolfriend of Anderson from Cheltenham College

Cheltenham College

Cheltenham College is a co-educational independent school, located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.One of the public schools of the Victorian period, it was opened in July 1841. An Anglican foundation, it is known for its classical, military and sporting traditions.The 1893 book Great...

 who had dropped out of English at Magdalen College

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

 on discovering that he would have to study Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

 under C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

, while Reiz was a chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

 graduate from Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...

 who later said "I met Lindsay Anderson on a Green Line

Green Line Coaches

Green Line is a commuter coach brand in the Home Counties of England. It is owned by the Arriva group.Green Line has its origin in the network of coach services established by the London General Omnibus Company in the 1920s and 1930s...

 bus. I was going to the British Film Institute

British Film Institute

The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...

 to look at some film for my editing book and he was going to see Ford's The Iron Horse

The Iron Horse (film)

The Iron Horse is a silent film directed by John Ford in 1924. It was produced by Fox Film. -Synopsis:The film presents an idealized image of the construction of the American first transcontinental railroad. It culminates with the scene of driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit on May...

."

Founded as the Film Society Magazine, the organ of the Oxford Film Society, in 1947, with Penelope Houston

Penelope Houston (film critic)

Penelope Houston is a British film critic and journal editor. In 1947 she was the first editor of the short-lived film journal Sequence founded by Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Gavin Lambert. From 1956 to 1990, she edited Sight & Sound, the journal of the British Film Institute, and was a...

 as its first editor, the journal quickly changed its name to Sequence, and produced fourteen issues between 1947 and 1952, the last few being edited by Reisz and Anderson. The British Free Cinema

Free Cinema

Free Cinema was a documentary film movement that emerged in England in the mid-1950s. The term referred to an absence of propagandised intent or deliberate box office appeal. Co-founded by Lindsay Anderson, though he later disdained the 'movement' tag, with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza...

 movement, co-founded in 1956 by Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...

, Karel Reisz

Karel Reisz

Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema.-Early life:...

, Tony Richardson

Tony Richardson

Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer.-Early life:Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist...

 and Lorenza Mazzetti, drew on the principles first expressed by the journal. Articles from Sequence by Anderson were published in Lindsay Anderson: The Collected Writings edited by Paul Ryan (London: Plexus, 2004).