Winstanley

Gerrard Winstanley is the leader of a religious group in the seventeenth century. What the group believes is this: land is nobody’s property and should be held in common. On that belief they settle on empty ground and begin to plant it. What they do brings them up against both the state and the church. The film tries to build the period down to the detail; clothing, tools and daily work are shown as they were. The account does not build an epic; it shows how the days pass. An idea being tested on the ground sits at the centre of the story. The ninety five minutes are given to that test. Miles Halliwell and Jerome Willis appear in the British film by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, completed in 1975.