Channel Incident is a 1940 British short (15 minute) drama film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Peggy Ashcroft, Gordon Harker, Robert Newton and Kenneth Griffith. It combines documentary footage with acting.
The film was a propaganda effort, made during the Second World War, which depicts the female owner, Ashcroft, of a yacht, the Wanderer, heading across the Channel to help evacuate British troops from Dunkirk. [1] [2] Other ships referenced, as the larger vessels to which the civilian small craft are ferrying troops lifted from the beaches, are the SS Princess Louise, SS Blackburn Rovers and Devonia.
The first 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 and Kate Winslet. 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.
Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is a 1995 pseudo-documentary containing grainy black and white footage of a hoaxed alien autopsy. In 1995, film purporting to show an alien autopsy conducted shortly after the Roswell incident was released by British entrepreneur Ray Santilli. The footage aired on television networks around the world. Fox television broadcast the purported autopsy, hosted by Jonathan Frakes, on August 28, 1995, under the title Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction, and re-broadcast it twice, each time to higher ratings. The footage was also broadcast on UK's Channel 4, and repackaged for the home video market. The program was an overnight sensation, with Time magazine declaring that the film had sparked a debate "with an intensity not lavished on any home movie since the Zapruder film".
UTV is the ITV region covering Northern Ireland, ITV subsidiary and the former on-air name of the free-to-air public broadcast television channel serving the area. It is run by ITV plc and is responsible for the regional news service and other programmes made principally for the area.
Dame Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft, known professionally as Peggy Ashcroft, was an English actress whose career spanned more than 60 years.
Anton Diffring was a German actor. He had an extensive film and television career in the United Kingdom from the 1940s to the 1980s, latterly appearing in international films. Primarily a character actor, he often played Nazi officers in World War II films, and other antagonistic authority figures.
Ashcroft is a village in the Thompson Country of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada. It is 30 kilometres (19 mi) downstream from the west end of Kamloops Lake, at the confluence of the Bonaparte and Thompson Rivers, and is in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District.
The military occupation of the Channel Islands by Nazi Germany lasted for most of the Second World War, from 30 June 1940 until liberation on 9 May 1945. The Bailiwick of Jersey and Bailiwick of Guernsey are British Crown dependencies in the English Channel, near the coast of Normandy. The Channel Islands were the only de jure part of the British Empire in Europe to be occupied by Nazi Germany during the war. Germany's allies Italy and Japan also occupied British territories in Africa and Asia, respectively.
The Le Paradis massacre was a World War II war crime committed by members of the 14th Company, SS Division Totenkopf, under the command of Hauptsturmführer Fritz Knöchlein. It took place on 27 May 1940, during the Battle of France, at a time when troops of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) were attempting to retreat through the Pas-de-Calais region during the Battle of Dunkirk.
Let George Do It! is a 1940 British black-and-white comedy musical war film directed by Marcel Varnel and starring George Formby. It was produced by Michael Balcon for Associated Talking Pictures and its successor, Ealing Studios, and distributed in the UK by ABFD. This was the first comedy from this studio to deal directly with the Second World War.
Appointment with Venus is a 1951 British war drama film, a film adaptation of the 1951 Jerrard Tickell novel of the same name. It was directed by Ralph Thomas, produced by Betty E. Box and its screenplay was written by the novelist Nicholas Phipps. The film was based on the evacuation of Alderney cattle from the Channel Island during World War II.
Open Media is a British television production company, best known for the discussion series After Dark, described in the national press as "the most original programme on television".
Charles Joel Saunders was an English film director and screenwriter who began in the industry as a film editor, and who also contributed to television. He was the brother of the theatrical producer Sir Peter Saunders.
The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest and most prestigious decoration of the British honours system. It is awarded for valour "in the presence of the enemy" to members of the British Armed Forces and may be awarded posthumously. It was previously awarded by countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, most of which have established their own honours systems and no longer recommend British honours. It may be awarded to a person of any military rank in any service and to civilians under military command. No civilian has received the award since 1879. Since the first awards were presented by Queen Victoria in 1857, two thirds of all awards have been personally presented by the British monarch. The investitures are usually held at Buckingham Palace.
SS Irma was a 1,322-ton steamship built by the British shipyard Sir Raylton Dixon & Co. Ltd. in Middlesbrough in the north-east of England. She was delivered to the Norwegian passenger ship company Det Bergenske Dampskibsselskab of Bergen in 1905. Irma sailed for the company until she was attacked and sunk by two MTBs belonging to the Royal Norwegian Navy on 13 February 1944.
Quiet Wedding is a 1941 British romantic comedy film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Margaret Lockwood, Derek Farr and Marjorie Fielding. The screenplay was written by Terence Rattigan and Anatole de Grunwald based on the play Quiet Wedding by Esther McCracken. The film was remade in 1958 as Happy Is the Bride.
David Edward Rose was a British television producer and commissioning editor.
Bridget Boland was an Irish-British screenwriter, playwright and novelist.
Dallas Bower was a British director and producer active during the early development of mass media communication. Throughout his career Bower's work spanned radio plays, television shows, propaganda shorts, animations and feature films, with his most notable projects consisting of Alfred Hitchcock’s first film in sound Blackmail (1929), the British Broadcasting Company's radio play Julius Caesar (1938), the Dunkirk evacuation propaganda short Channel Incident (1940), the feature film Henry V (1944), and an Anglo-French adaptation of Lewis Carroll's children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland entitled Alice au pays des merveilles (1949). He later produced some of the earliest British television commercials.
ITV Sunday Night Theatre, originally titled ITV Saturday Night Theatre and often shortened to simply Sunday Night Theatre or Saturday Night Theatre, is a British television anthology series screened on ITV, whose episodes were contributed by various companies in the ITV network.
SS Prinses Astrid was a Belgian cross-Channel ferry struck a naval mine 3 nautical miles (5.6 km) off the coast of Dunkirk, France and sank with the loss of five of her 65 crew. All 60 survivors and 218 passengers on board were rescued by SS Cap Hatid (France) and various tugs from Dunkirk.