Archives for Education

Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister's masterly collage of the various people and classes of Britain - at home and at work, at war and at peace - is one of the great films of war-time Britain.

Documentary, public information film, morale booster; propaganda film – all descriptions that apply to Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister's extraordinary war-time film. Using his customary combination of poetry and propaganda, Jennings constructs a collage of the various people and classes of Britain, at home and at work, at war and at peace. The result, while not overtly proselytising, sounded a clear clarion call to internal and international audiences to fight and save Great Britain from the onslaught of war. The film was nominated for the inaugural Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 1943.

Director: Humphrey Jennings

Duration: 20 minutes

Suggested credit: Listen to Britain (1942) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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This extraordinary and unexpected snapshot of rural life in wartime - unseen for years due to the fragility of the materials - documents most ancient of English traditions: the selection and crowning of the Queen of the May. But what is so surprising is that 60 years ago the village of Stanion in Northamptonshire chose to honour a young black girl - apparently the daughter of an African merchant seaman who had been evacuated there during the War.

It's hard to know quite how literally to take the proceedings. The film was made by the Colonial Film Unit for the purpose of screening throughout Britain's African and Caribbean colonies - to demonstrate 'typical' life in the UK - at a time when the government needed to recruit the support of men and women from across the Empire. Later, in the immediate post-War period, such films not only acted to reinforce imperial solidarity, but formed part of a propaganda campaign to attract cheap labour to the UK.

Duration: 7 minutes

Suggested credit: Springtime in an English Village (1944) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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Returning to his native Sheffield, demobbed serviceman Sandy faces a dilemma... This steel industry drama-doc is laced with super location shots, but is mainly shot in a studio (with sound added later: Sandy's would-be 'Yorkshire' accent must be heard to be disbelieved...). This government sponsored short is ultimately less a documentary or drama than a parable of the recovering post-war economy.

Dodgy voiceovers aside, Furnival and Son is enjoyably cinematic - especially the shadowy camerawork and Elisabeth Lutyens' brooding score (with suitably brass-heavy themes). During the war the government's Crown Film Unit had developed 'story-documentary' as an effective medium for information and persuasion. Updated to peacetime, it's as much concerned with conflicted individuals as with group dynamics. Here the classical story arc first raises then resolves topical dilemmas: mass production contrasted with family-firm craftsmanship, the carrot of American investment meeting the stick of productivity pressures. The film's tribute to the 'smoke, dirt and hard work' of proud cities like Sheffield feels a tad patronising yet basically sincere for all that.

Director: Denis Segaller

Duration: 19 minutes

Suggested credit: Furnival and Son (1948) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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An impression of life in the industrial valleys of south Wales, from daybreak to midnight, and of the growing part played in that life by buses and railways. The free verse spoken by Donald Houston acts as a link on the soundtrack between various arias, choruses and orchestral interludes from Handel’s Messiah which utter their own comments – lyrical, ironic or humorous – upon the pictures of Welsh life and landscape that they accompany.

Director: Michael Clarke

Duration: 20 minutes

Suggested credit: Every Valley (1957) © The British Film Institute

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Documentary warning children about the drawbacks of cigarettes – not least their addictiveness. Hacking coughs punctuate the soundtrack throughout, making the film’s propaganda purpose clear from the start. We follow a group of children trying to find out why the various adults in their lives smoke, and what the attractions are considering what to them are obvious drawbacks. Indiscriminate smoking “looks funny to us now”, says the narrator, but The Smoking Machine’s own footage of people casually smoking in cinemas, cafés and on public transport must seem equally bizarre to today’s kids.

Although there had long been suspicions about links between smoking and cancer, it was the publication of a Royal College of Physicians report, Smoking and Health (1962) that gave the issue widespread publicity. The Ministry of Health responded by funding anti-smoking propaganda films, many aimed specifically at children in the vulnerable 11-16 range. The first, Smoking and You (1963) was much more graphic in its close-ups of blackened lungs and the side-effects of smoking-related illnesses, but was perhaps less accessible than The Smoking Machine’s focus on children’s natural curiosity.

Director: Sarah Erulkar

Duration: 16 minutes

Suggested credit: The Smoking Machine (1964) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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Racism is shown the yellow card in this eye-opening public information film about new laws giving protection from discrimination in housing and employment. Targeting both potential victims of racism and its active as well as unconscious perpetrators, the film appeals to the general public by reminding them of Britain's much vaunted tradition of sportsmanship and 'fair play'.

It seems hardly credible that before the 1968 Race Relations Act an employer could post a job advertisement which banned "coloureds" from applying, but this was the case, as was the prevalence of the "ugly business" of casual racism. Although the earlier 1965 Race Relations Act made discrimination on "the grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins" unlawful, there were several key exemptions, notably for landlords and employers. The Race Relations Act 1968, which came into force on 26 November 1968, widened and strengthened these existing laws to encompass housing and employment. As well as the English language version shown here, this film was also released in several Asian language versions including Hindi and Urdu.

Duration: 1 minute

Suggested credit: Race Relations Board (1969) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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PC Jim Yates patrols his patch - the streets of Notting Hill - in this upbeat film from 1973.

Duration: 7 minutes

Suggested credit: Home Beat Policeman (1973) © Crown Copyright/The British Film Institute. Public Record

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A high speed Inter-City train is the star of this impressionist film in which picture and music are brought together to enhance the mood and rhythm of the subject and hail the arrival of 125mph regular passenger services.

With specially composed music by David Gow and no commentary, Overture: One-Two-Five was the last complete production to be shot on 35mm film by British Transport Films. It was produced to mark the introduction of the new Inter-City 125 High Speed Train services between Paddington and Bristol. One of the last big budget productions, it was treated to a coat of Technicolor and a theatrical cinema release. It also marked the beginning of the slow decline of BTF which culminated in its closure. With the abandoning of support features and shorts at cinemas in the late 1970s and early 1980s, most of the unit’s films after 1978 were made primarily for internal use.

Director: C. David Lochner

Duration: 7 minutes

Suggested credit: Overture: One-Two-Five (1978) © The British Film Institute

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The hip-hop or rap scene came to this country from New York in the early 1980s. The media exploited the new craze and then dropped what has become, for a growing number of young black Britons, a way of life. 

Tim Westwood, a DJ well-respected 'on the street', has made this film as a showcase for the talented young rappers, scratch-mix DJs and graffiti artists in London. With a special guest appearance by the New York kings of rap, Run‐D.M.C., at the Brixton Academy.

Director: Tim Westwood

Duration: 31 minutes

Suggested credit: Open Space: Bad Meaning Good (1987) © BBC Archive

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Mrs Thatcher committed herself to tackling Britain's inner cities. [Since the early seventies], Open Space and its predecessor Open Door have enabled people to make programmes under their own editorial control, many of which have come from inner city groups. 

This rich archive is drawn upon to present a portrait of the deepening urban crisis through the eyes of the people who have to live with the problems and have struggled to solve them. From more than a dozen very different communities filmed [since the early seventies], the issues remain disturbingly similar - bad housing, social dereliction, economic decline and mass unemployment. 

Director: Philip Morrow

Duration: 32 minutes

Suggested credit: Open Space: Inner City Blues (1987) © BBC Archive

To view the full film, please ask your lecturer.

"The process is very simple" - Sue Robbie shows how to set up home video editing back in '87. Robbie looks at different ways of making the most effective use of your video material. She explores some of the choices which can be made when editing and enhancing videos by adding music and commentary.

The six-part series was an introductory guide to making home videos. This is episode four - A Cut Above the Rest.

Duration: 24 minutes

Suggested credit: Video Active (1987) © BBC Archive

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Acclaimed observational documentary by BAFTA award winning director Molly Dineen set at London’s Angel tube station in 1989, three years before its desperately needed renovation.  

The programme provides a humorous account of 48 hours in the life of the tube station, from the daily round of fraught commuters, overburdened lifts and cancelled trains to the nightly activities when 'fluffers', women who clean human hair and rubbish of the tracks to avoid a fire hazard and ‘the Permanent Way’, gangs of men who work with pickaxes in almost pitch-black conditions to renovate parts of the track, spring into action to prepare the line for the following day.

Director: Molly Dineen

Duration: 39 minutes

Suggested credit: 40 Minutes: Heart of the Angel (1989) © BBC Archive

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Nicole finds her mother's ornaments tacky, Peggy won't use her daughter's gold taps, and Pat is mortified to discover her tastes are now identical to her mother's. Mothers and daughters say what they really think about each other's living rooms. 

Director: Nicholas Barker

Duration: 49 minutes

Suggested credit: Signs of the Times: Big Ben and the Jesus Picture (1992) © BBC Archive

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Diane-Louise Jordan takes a trip on the information superhighway to explore some of the delights of the internet circa 1995. This means updating the Blue Peter website and emailing the then US President, Bill Clinton.

Duration: 7 minutes

Suggested credit: Blue Peter (1995) © BBC Archive

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