Enhance your library’s holdings with the Film, Media and Music Collection, comprising 254 titles. This collection features over 200 books authored by leading scholars in the field and is accompanied by the esteemed journal, Film Studies.
The collection provides comprehensive coverage of film, television and media studies, featuring in-depth volumes on British, French, Spanish and Latin American filmmakers. It includes exclusive interviews, debates and discussions on contemporary practices, and explores the intersections of film and television with sociocultural and political landscapes. Additionally, the collection offers historical context and analysis of current debates and future challenges in the medium.
| Key series |
| French Film Directors Series |
| Music and Society |
| Spanish and Latin American Filmmakers |
| Studies in Popular Culture |
| The Television Series |
| British FilmMakers |
| Cinema Aesthetics |
| Collection year | Titles |
| 2025 titles | 16 |
| 2023/4 titles | 19 |
| 1998-2022 titles | 211 |
| Total collection | 254 |
| Keywords |
| Theory |
| TV |
| Radio |
| Feminism |
| Genre |
| Migration and race |
| Representation and adaptation |
| International cinema |
| Propaganda |
| Filmmaking |
| Subcultures |
| Music |
| Thema subject categories |
| Digital, video and new media arts |
| Documentary films |
| Film history, theory or criticism |
| Film: styles and genres |
| Development studies |
| Filmmaking and production |
| France |
| Individual film directors, film-makers |
| Media studies |
| Music industry |
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Film, media and music collection
Accessing regular commercial exhibition proved quite difficult for the makers of government PIFs. Grierson had an early success by convincing Gaumont-British to acquire some EMBFU films, add soundtracks, and then these Imperial Six, as they became known, were exhibited in their cinemas. The transfer of the unit to the GPO meant that commercial success and exhibition was less important as the Post Office provided a myriad of venues in which to show the GPOFU’s films. Occasionally during the later 1930s a GPOFU PIF would feature in a commercial cinema programme but these were normally limited to small local cinemas rather than the new chains. A major reason for this was the general scepticism of the commercial sector for films in which the focus was information rather than entertainment. However, the onset of war changed the public attitude into one eager for knowledge and in responding to this the commercial sector made a series of agreements with the government to include PIFs in their daily programmes. There were undoubtedly some CFU productions, especially those of a feature film length such as Jennings’ Silent Village (1943) or Jackson’s Western Approaches (1944), which had both limited commercial and critical success; however, this did not necessarily translate to the shorter PIFs. Although the war ended in 1945 the cinema owners continued to show government PIFs. However, audience responses were apparently increasingly antipathetic to the films and the agreement to show them was eventually terminated.
The end of the Second World War removed the key focus for both government policy and, by implication, that of the Crown Film Unit. The incoming Labour administration faced a multiplicity of problems during the early post-war years. At one stage the entire future of the unit was under review, but its role as a purveyor of government information was recognized, although its status was diminished and it had to secure funding by pitching ideas to individual government departments. Despite this, the CFU produced its largest number of PIFs during the period 1946–52. These films reflected both the domestic and international situations as well as the advice and information emanating from the sponsoring government departments. This chapter explores the films through a variety of contemporary themes which relate both to the economic and financial problems facing the country as well as the deteriorating international and colonial situation caused, in some part, by an aggressive Soviet Union. The very nature of individual department sponsorship also meant that some films were created for entirely specialist audiences rather than the usual theatrical and non-theatrical exhibition.
The GPO Film Unit morphed into the Crown Film Unit in 1940 at a time when the nation was under severe pressure. The demands of total war, the anxieties of the government and the changing concerns of the British people were to be reflected in the films produced between 1940 and 1945. Amongst these productions are some of the most famous films which have subsequently provided a backdrop to the national narrative about Britain’s role in the Second World War. However, although Target for Tonight is popularly recognizable today, the CFU produced many films such as Builders and Venture Adventure which described wartime conditions and have been lost to popular culture. An analysis of the films and the context in which they were produced is made possible by identifying a set of film classifications. The allocation of the films to categories such as hitting back, reassurance, participation and looking forward to peace enables an exploration of not only their content but also the contemporary perception of both national policy and the stage of the conflict.
Immediately after the First World War the British government appeared to lose all interest in the value of film other than its potential for raising revenue. However, the social environment had changed: cinemas were opening nationwide and film audiences, both theatrical and non-theatrical, were expanding rapidly. Politically, too, the need to engage the newly enfranchised electorate had resulted in the Conservative Party’s interest in the development of cinema vans which toured the country showing partisan films. Their publicity value coincided with the party’s adoption of imperial preference and the perceived need to publicize that position. To convince the general public to move away from the traditional policy of free trade, the government created the Empire Marketing Board. The board’s secretary was Stephen Tallents, who appreciated the value of film for public relations. Unfortunately, the board’s first foray into film sponsorship was the disastrous One Family (1930). Tallents appointed John Grierson as the board’s film officer and in 1930 filmmaking was taken in-house with the creation of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit. The unit’s subsequent productions, although often marred by technical difficulties and lack of expertise, created a few films for mainly non-theatrical exhibition, not just in favour of imperial preference but also addressing other topics, often extolling British values and countryside. Regrettably, the developing popularity of the board’s films was cut short in 1933 as it became a casualty of the government’s austerity response to the Great Depression.
One of the first actions of the newly elected Conservative administration in 1951 was to signal the closure of the Crown Film Unit, thus ending more than two decades of government film production. Although the unit had had some recent success such as the Oscar awarded for Daybreak in Udi (1949), there had also been a number of badly received and very expensive productions. Amongst these were the mining disaster film, The Cumberland Story (1947), and a desperate attempt to explain economic hardship in A Yank Comes Back (1949). Although Grierson returned from Canada, his brief appearance as film controller had little real impact. Similarly, several key staff, such as Humphrey Jennings, successfully sought employment elsewhere. By the turn of the decade there were several powerful enemies ranged against the CFU. Not only was there ideological opposition to the unit in the Conservative Party but it also faced hostility from the commercial sector and, perhaps most deadly of all, the Treasury. Other producers of documentary-style PIFs always believed that the CFU had been given preferential treatment by the government. However, most damning was the Treasury’s assessment that the CFU was far more expensive than its competitors, especially now it had a major studio facility in Beaconsfield. As the government had been elected on a platform of reducing expenditure, the CFU was an easy target.
The transfer of almost the entire EMB Film Unit to the General Post Office was, in no short measure, a result of the lobbying of Stephen Tallents and the recognition by the postmaster general, Kingsley Wood, that film was an increasingly important medium of communication. In the early 1930s the Post Office was the largest employer in the UK and most British citizens engaged with its services on a daily basis. Not only was it responsible for the mail and local post offices but also telephones, wireless telegraphy, public savings and so on. The chapter reviews the films produced during these years, starting with ‘legacy’ productions which were films where the production had been commenced prior to the demise of the Empire Marketing Board. Most of the other films were essentially public relations productions, which explained and publicized the services for which the General Post Office was responsible. The unit frequently concentrated upon new technologies, such as the dial telephone and its advantages for the general public. Not only did the films reflect technological developments but they also began to reflect national concerns as the international environment became more worrying. Coincidentally, the desire for domestic safety and security was one of the key themes behind the film unit’s productions extolling the virtues of saving with the Post Office Savings Bank. All these films were normally exhibited non-theatrically and could be ordered through a central library.
The introduction provides a rationale for the study of the films made by the government film units from 1930 to 1952. Unlike most previous studies, it examines the full catalogue produced during these years by the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit (EMBFU), the General Post Office Film Unit (GPOFU) and the Crown Film Unit (CFU) rather than concentrating upon specific films or those produced or directed by particular individuals. Although the films were exhibited widely both commercially and in non-theatrical venues, especially during the wartime years, their importance and influence has almost disappeared from academic discourse. It is possible that, as most of the units’ film output were short five-to-twenty-minute public information films (PIFs) often on mundane or technical topics, rather than commercially exhibited feature films with popular film stars, they were regarded as somewhat inferior; and perhaps, too, they were tainted by the belief that they were unworthy, being merely propaganda. This latter accusation is addressed, and the important and varied roles of the public information film are discussed. The adoption of a thematic approach to reviewing PIFs is explained and justified. The variety of sources, including filmic, documentary and oral, are discussed along with access and availability issues. Overall, the study complements the approach taken by Chapman et al. in The New Film History (2007).
There was both a national and an international legacy to the ending of government filmmaking. Inevitably those who lost their jobs sought others where they could use their skills and expertise. ‘Chick’ Fowle, one of the CFU’s senior cameramen, followed Alberto Cavalcanti to Brazil where he helped develop the Vera Cruz Studios and was responsible for several Brazilian feature films in the 1950s. The concept of a national filmmaking organization was fairly widely copied, especially in Commonwealth countries. Domestically, on the other hand, Stewart McAllister took his editing skills to British Transport Films and Anvil, one of the major UK production companies in the 1950s and 60s, was founded by ex-members of the CFU. The impact of this can be readily seen not only in the documentaries produced in the following decades but also in the feature film industry. Some of the techniques and approaches appear in such diverse genres as new wave and, perhaps more obviously, in the number of British war films of the 1950s. The Dam Busters (1955), for example, is redolent of many of the scenes already featured in Target for Tonight (1941). The chapter concludes with a special study on how public information films responded to the developing fear and threat of aerial attack and how the government film units’ approach was replicated even after the 1952 closure.
This chapter considers the problems of evaluating the impact of PIFs at a distance of many decades. The work of Janet Staiger is used to develop an appropriate analytical perspective. Government PIFs, especially after 1940, often had a dual distribution both into the commercial cinema circuit and non-theatrically. The latter method had been pioneered by John Grierson who appreciated the educational value of film but it soon became more formally organized through the Imperial Institute Library which, over the years, morphed into the Central Office of Information Film Library. The films contained within the library were normally distributed free of charge, although often requiring the borrower to pay the return postage. By the mid-1930s the PIFs were available to any organization which had the facilities to show them, and these included schools, churches, large post offices, youth clubs, trades union buildings, military bases and many other venues. Alongside this form of exhibition, the films were distributed for non-theatrical exhibition in cinema vans and projector units. PIFs were not only circulated for non-theatrical exhibition domestically but were also distributed overseas, chiefly in the colonies.
Between 1930 and 1952 government film units produced nearly 400 public information films. Although a few, such as Night Mail (1936) and Target for Tonight (1941), are still recognized as seminal works in the development of the British documentary movement, most of the films created were public relations or informational films of differing quality and length. This book examines the full catalogue of films produced by the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit, the General Post Office Film Unit and the Crown Film Unit. A detailed analysis enables a series of themes to be identified and discussed, which reflected not only the needs of the sponsor but also the national and international contexts in which the films were produced. A key aspect addressed in this book is the nature and importance of the distribution and exhibition of the films. Although some films were exhibited through commercial cinemas, most were shown though very different non-theatrical settings. By a detailed study of contemporary documents, it is also possible to suggest the impact of these public information films as well as the short- and long-term legacy of the government film units.