Land of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930-1950

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Film Description

Featuring 40 films, this extensive collection is a major retrospective of the British documentary film movement during its period of greatest influence.

These films – many of which are made available here for the first time since their original release – capture the spirit and strength, concerns and resolve of Britain and its people before, during and after the Second World War.

These diverse and compelling films are fascinating historical documents, bearing witness to the social and industrial transformations of the rapidly changing world, but they are also striking in their different approach to the form.

Using poetry, dramatic reconstruction, modernist techniques and explicit propaganda, these film-makers found fresh, new ways to get their message across.

The collection contains both classic documentaries and lesser-known films, including Paul Rotha's Shipyard (1935), Arthur Elton's Housing Problems (1935) and Humphrey Jennings' sublime Words for Battle (1941), Listen to Britain (1942), and the emotive A Diary for Timothy (1946).

Also featured are films from directors such as Ruby Grierson (Today We Live, 1937), Basil Wright (Children at School, 1937), Paul Dickson (The Undefeated, 1950) and Donald Alexander (Five and Under, 1941).

Film Information

DVD Extras

4 discs. This box set includes new interviews with some of the directors featured on the discs, a 15-minute film of John Grierson (the 'father' of documentary) addressing a packed audience at the National Film Theatre in 1959, and is completed by an extensive booklet containing introductory essays, biographies and notes on all of the films by leading researchers and scholars in the field of documentary filmmaking.

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Review by anonymous on 2nd April 2008

These films – many of which are made available here for the first time since their original release – capture the spirit and strength, concerns and resolve of Britain and its people before, during and after the Second World War.
Featuring 40 films – both classic documentaries and lesser-known films – this extensive collection is a major retrospective of the British documentary film movement during its period of greatest influence.

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Article - "Land of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930-1950" by Michael Brooke
Saturday 12th April 2008

"Doubtless, were we a rational race, the spectacle of our present position would overwhelm us. But then we've always, thank heaven, remained deaf to appeals to reason, convinced that the experts are invariably wrong." So says the cartoonist Osbert Lancaster during Hu...  View article in full

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