A new BFI season marks the 75th anniversary of Contemporary Films, the pioneering British distributor that brought foreign-language auteur cinema – from Ingmar Bergman to Satyajit Ray – to UK audiences from 1951 onwards. Founded by Charles Cooper, a committed communist and son of a Ukrainian butcher, the company played a formative role in exposing British viewers to world cinema, including a young Mike Leigh, whose directorial debut Bleak Moments was distributed by the firm in 1971.

The season will screen films such as Miloš Forman's A Blonde in Love, Bergman's Wild Strawberries and Jack Hazan's A Bigger Splash. Cooper began by supplying short films to Britain's roughly 200 film societies before moving into features with the 1952 Japanese film Children of Hiroshima, and had earlier brought Soviet films to the UK before and after a spell in the US, from which he was deported in 1950. Although Contemporary's commercial influence declined in the early 1990s amid changing industry practices, the company still exists, and figures including Leigh are supporting the retrospective in recognition of its cultural legacy.