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The oldest known surviving film was shot in the United Kingdom as well as early colour films. While film production reached an all-time high in 1936, the "golden age" of British cinema is usually thought to have occurred in the 1940s, during which the directors David Lean, Michael Powell, and Carol Reed produced their most critically acclaimed works. Many British actors have accrued critical success and worldwide recognition, such as Audrey Hepburn, Olivia de Havilland, Vivien Leigh, Glynis Johns, Maggie Smith, Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Ian Mckellen, Joan Collins, Judi Dench, Julie Andrews, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gary Oldman, Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Peter O’Toole, Kate Winslet and Benedict Cumberbatch. Some of the films with the largest ever box office returns have been made in the United Kingdom, including the fourth and fifth highest-grossing film franchises.
John Grierson was a Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Flaherty's Moana. In 1939, Grierson established the all-time Canadian film institutional production and distribution company The National Film Board of Canada controlled by the Government of Canada.
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951–74).
Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings was an English documentary filmmaker and one of the founders of the Mass Observation organisation. Jennings was described by film critic and director Lindsay Anderson in 1954 as "the only real poet that British cinema has yet produced".
Leslie Armande Norman was an English post-war film director, producer and editor who also worked extensively on 1960s television series later in his career.
Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti was a Brazilian-born film director and producer. He was often credited under the single name "Cavalcanti".
Night Mail is a 1936 British documentary film directed and produced by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, and produced by the General Post Office (GPO) Film Unit. The 24-minute film documents the nightly postal train operated by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) from London to Scotland and the staff who operate it. Narrated by John Grierson and Stuart Legg, the film ends with a "verse commentary" written by W. H. Auden to a score composed by Benjamin Britten. The locomotive featured in the film is LMS Royal Scot Class 6115 Scots Guardsman.
Basil Charles Wright was an English documentary filmmaker, film historian, film critic and teacher.
Raymond Egerton Harry Watt was a Scottish documentary and feature film director, who began his career working for John Grierson and Robert Flaherty.
Sir Stephen George Tallents was a British civil servant and public relations expert.
This is a bibliography of books, plays, films, and libretti written, edited, or translated by the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden (1907–1973). See the main entry for a list of biographical and critical studies and external links. Dates are dates of publication of performance, not of composition.
William Percy Lipscomb was a British-born Hollywood playwright, screenwriter, producer and director. He died in London in 1958, aged 71.
Christmas Under Fire is a 1941 British short documentary film directed by Harry Watt for the Crown Film Unit of the Ministry of Information. It was conceived as propaganda primarily for an American audience, to raise support for the Allied cause during the Second World War. Produced in the context of German bombings of British cities, it depicts the resilience of British civilians despite the hardships they suffered during the 1940 Christmas, by showing the continuation of Christmas traditions in the face of the disruptions caused by war. The film is a sequel to London Can Take It!, with the same narrator, Quentin Reynolds. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, which was won by Churchill's Island.
The Documentary Film Movement is the group of British filmmakers, led by John Grierson, who were influential in British film culture in the 1930s and 1940s.
Stuart Legg was a pioneering English documentary filmmaker. At the 14th Academy Awards in 1941, Legg's National Film Board of Canada film Churchill's Island became the first-ever documentary to win an Oscar.
Stewart McAllister was a British documentary film editor who collaborated closely with Humphrey Jennings during the Second World War to produce films for the Crown Film Unit of the Ministry of Information. His contributions towards these films was largely neglected until Dai Vaughan's biography of him, Portrait of an Invisible Man, was published in 1983.
Britain at Bay is a 1940 British propaganda film directed by Harry Watt and produced by the General Post Office GPO Film Unit of the British Ministry of Information and distributed by the National Film Board of Canada. The film was written and narrated by noted author and political commentator J. B. Priestley.
Squadron 992 is a 23-minute 1940 British propaganda film produced by the General Post Office GPO Film Unit of the British Ministry of Information and re-distributed by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) as part of their wartime Canada Carries On series. The film was directed by Harry Watt and produced by Alberto Cavalcanti. Squadron 992 describes the training and operations in 1940 of No. 992 Squadron RAF, a Royal Air Force (RAF) barrage balloon unit stationed in the United Kingdom. The film's French version title was Escadrille 992.
Night Mail, also known as Concerto or Britain's Railway, was a 1988 British advert produced by Ridley Scott Associates and British Transport Films for British Rail. It was based on the 1936 documentary of the same name, and used the first stanza of a poem by W. H. Auden that was written for the film. Further verses in the style of Auden were written to accompany the footage, read out by actor Tom Courtenay.
Spare Time is a 1939 British film directed by Humphrey Jennings for the GPO Film Unit, and made for the 1939 New York World's Fair. It is 15 minutes long and documents the leisure activities of workers in the coal, steel, and cotton industries in Sheffield, Bolton, Manchester and Pontypridd. Commentary is provided by Laurie Lee.
References
- 1 2 Liz Faber; Helen Walters (2003). Animation Unlimited: Innovative Short Films Since 1940. Laurence King Publishing. p. 1929. ISBN 1-85669-346-5.
