MetaFilter posts tagged with newsreel

Selections from the BFI's collection of early cinema

The Whelk — Thu, 02 May 2013 07:47:57 -0800

The British Film Institute's YouTube channels offer a staggering amount (previously) of content on historical cinema, shorts, and discussion. Some short selections from the early and silent period of note - The Sick Kitten (1903) - How Percy Won The Beauty Competition (1909) - Tilly The Tomboy Visits The Poor (1910) - Suffragette Riot In Trafalgar Square (1913) - The Fugitive Futurist, in which a man on the run shows a device that can see far into the future (1924) - Vaudevillian legend Billy Merson Singing 'Desdemona'. Widely considered Britain's first sound film - (1927) Charley In New Town - part of an animated series from the Central Office, this one explaining the need for "New Towns." (1948) - Growing Girls, a filmstrip guide to puberty for young women (1951).

FOOD FLASH - There's spud in your eye!

The Whelk — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:06:42 -0800

The Ministry Of Food was a British government ministerial posts separated from that of the Minister of Agriculture. A major task of the latter office was to oversee rationing in the United Kingdom arising out of World War II. They made many newsreels and PSAs to inform the citizenry how to use the food rationing system: Rationing is introduced in 1939 The new ration books are coming! Cod Liver Oil Here's spud in your eye Don't cut that bread! DON'T WASTE FOOD! Dig For Victory! Milk is here! In addition, some short films instructed people in how to best use the new rationing system : Two Cooks And A Cabbage How To Make Tea Rabbit Pie Buying black market meat: a Partner in CRIME A US view explaining UK rationing to the States.

teach the lessons of the past through the music of the future

brilliantmistake — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 09:01:44 -0800

Public Service Broadcasting are a British banjo and synth duo who construct music based on samples from public information and propaganda films. Their objective is to 'teach the lessons of the past through the music of the future'. Darlings of BBC Radio's 6Music they have just released their War Room EP constructed around archive wartime material from the BFI. Each track has an accompanying, excellently edited film on the Youtube The War Room EP - If War Should Come, London Can Take It, Spitfire, Dig For Victory and Waltz For George Also their earlier tracks ROYGBIV and Lit Up

"Pure Cinema"

zarq — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:18:00 -0800

Человек с киноаппаратом ("Man with a Movie Camera") is a classic experimental documentary film that was released in 1929. Directed by pioneer Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, this classic, silent documentary film has no story and no actors, and is actually three documentaries in one. Ostensibly it documents 24 hours of life in a single city in the Soviet Union. But it is also a documentary of the filming of that documentary and a depiction of an audience watching that documentary and their responses. "We see the cameraman and the editing of the film, but what we don't see is any of the film itself." Reviews: Old School Reviews and Roger Ebert: "Born in 1896 and coming of age during the Russian Revolution, Vertov considered himself a radical artist in a decade where modernism and surrealism were gaining stature in all the arts. He began by editing official newsreels, which he assembled into montages that must have appeared rather surprising to some audiences, and then started making his own films. He would invent an entirely new style."
Wikipedia on Vertov and Man with a Movie Camera: "This film is famous for the range of cinematic techniques Vertov invents, deploys or develops, such as double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, stop motion animations and a self-reflexive style (at one point it features a split screen tracking shot; the sides have opposite Dutch angles)."
Version with an alternate soundtrack. (Alloy Orchestra) A number of other Dziga works are available in their entirety on Youtube, including A Sixth Part of the World, Soviet Toys, The Eleventh (1, 2, 3, 4), Kino-Glaz and some of his Kino Pravda newsreel series: 1, 5, 7 (in all, 23 were produced.) There is also a video with additional excerpts. At Ubu.com, Kino Eye and Three Songs About Lenin. Interpreting Vertov: Previously on MeFi

March of Time

zarq — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 08:33:39 -0800

From 1935 to 1951, Time Magazine bridged the gap between print & radio news reporting and the new visual medium of film, with March of Time: award-winning newsreel reports that were a combination of objective documentary, dramatized fiction and pro-American, anti-totalitarian propaganda. They “often tackled subjects and themes that audiences weren’t used to seeing — foreign affairs, social trends, public-health issues — and did so with a combination of panache and subterfuge that today seems either absurd or visionary.” (Previous two links have autoplaying video.) By 1937, the short films were being seen by as many as 26 million people every month and may have helped steer public opinion on numerous issues, including (eventually) America’s entry to WWII. Video samples are available at Time.com, the March of Time Facebook page and the entire collection is available online, (free registration required) at HBO Archives. Two pages at the March Towards War site are linked above. The full site thoroughly examines March of Time as a propaganda effort. (Autoplaying video.) Also includes a quiz: Spot the Fake. Some March of Time clips were subject to censorship. Most featured reenactments, faked photos and footage. They are a look into how the editors of Time wanted people to think about the news. More about the series at TCM. In 1938, March of Time produced a sixteen-minute short film entitled “Inside Nazi Germany,” one of the most controversial films ever released into American theaters. (Available in two parts on YouTube: 1, 2.) The CBC documentary series about the history of news media, "Dawn of the Eye," discussed the film and its impact.

Pathé News

HastyDave — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:24:43 -0800

The British Pathé Archive: The British Pathé archive is a collection of over 90,000 clips from Pathé newsreels and cinemagazines, which were shown in British cinemas from 1910 until 1970. They were also shown in the US, under licence to Fox. Typically accompanied by jaunty music, and narrated by a man with an oft-parodied conservative RP accent, the archive covers many of the momentous events of the 20th Century. It also contains the trivial.

'It Speaks for Itself'

anastasiav — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:57:12 -0800

British Movietone News - Digital Archives :: Apparently complete archives of the UK Movietone Newsreels from 1929 - 1979. Free registration required. Uses Quicktime. Beware of many lost hours ahead. Via DaddyTypes

war and popcorn

damn yankee — Thu, 13 Mar 2003 08:30:59 -0800

The return of the Movietone? "We fell on this idea of recreating films that looked like and were the length of the old Movietone forms of the 1940s," said Marine Lt. Col. Jim Kuhn, military producer for the undertaking called the Movietone Newsreel Project. Kuhn says the objective is to put together a short film that combines the commentary of real-life soldiers with the kind of footage civilian journalists would be unable to get. (more inside)