The documentary movement is a cornerstone of British film history and arguably our greatest contribution to world cinema. During the 1940s the British Council was an enthusiastic commissioner of short documentaries designed to showcase Britain to the rest of the world. Largely unseen for nearly 70 years, the collection is currently being digitised and contains early works by filmmakers such as Basil Wright, Jack Cardiff, and Ken Annakin. The films picked for this special preview by TIME/IMAGE are not only technically superb and historically interesting, they also provide fascinating viewpoints on the topical subjects of today, such as journalism and trade unions.
- Director:
- Misc
- Running Time:
- 100 mins
- Showing:
- This is a past event.
There are no planned future listings for this event, and as such tickets are currently unavailable; however, any future screenings will be posted here, so watch this space!
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Wondrous films, at once artistically mind-blowing, informative and unintentionally riotous – if longer than they need to be for purely entertainment purposes – superbly presented. Definitely among the best (i.e. least digital-looking and intrusive of the beauty of film) digital restorations I’ve seen. If that’s because they were only expertly preserved and telecined and not “restored” post this, that would be saying something (I don’t know if this is the case). The cartoons come close to a mythical ideal I have of the potentially magical atmosphere of narration over still illustration, movement insinuated by timing, music and the dynamism of the drawings and what sparingly used touches of actual animation that be afforded placed so as to the bring the whole work to life. Steel’s title sequence I would have included among my favourites (along with The Rocky Horror Picture Show and My Best Friend’s Wedding – I never said they were favourites as a whole) if it weren’t that the rest of it goes on to be in the same intoxicating vein of making me feel, while seeing it, that it’s beautiful in the way that normally only a painting can be but even more than one can be. And, again, for a stubborn, elitist devotee of actual film like myself that’s pretty impressive for a digital transfer. Just the room could have done with being a tad darker and/or the gamma adjusted to make the blacks a bit blacker, if I’m to really nitpick, and I can imagine the transfers looking even better with a DCP to space themselves across if they were only on Blu-ray Disc or otherwise more compressed files here.