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Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2014 2:46 pm
by antnield
Outer Space due for release on September 22nd, containing The Glitterball, Supersonic Saucer and Kadoyng.
Three intergalactic adventures from the archives of the Children's Film Foundation land on DVD for the very first time.

In the award-winning The Glitterball (1977) two teenage boys try to help a tiny spherical alien get back to its mothership, while the army and a devious petty crook pursue the creature for its wonderful powers.

In Kadoyng (1972) it looks as if nothing can stop the village of Byway being demolished to make way for the new motorway - until a mysterious visitor accidentally arrives from Outer Space.

In Supersonic Saucer (1956) a baby supersonic saucer inadvertently arrives from Venus. Adopted by a group of children, it causes many misunderstandings but prevents a robbery from their school.

Features:

- The Glitterball (1977) 56 mins Colour
- Kadoyng (1972) 60 mins. Colour
- Supersonic Saucer (1956). 50 mins. Colour
- Fully Illustrated Booklet

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2014 11:56 am
by colinr0380
The Glitterball gets a fun write up in the book Offbeat: British Cinema's Curiosities, Obscurities and Forgotten Gems:
Julian Upton wrote:The Glitterball is perhaps what E.T. would have looked like if it was wholly funded with the takings from a modest car boot sale. But The Glitterball was actually five years ahead of Spielberg's sci-fi blockbuster and is no less charming despite its vastly humbler origins...

...This being the world of CFF, the boys are well meaning, polite and unassuming - they make E.T.'s California brats look like volatile delinquents. And, as usual, the adults are on hand just to mess things up. If they're not trying to impose some debilitating or misunderstanding authority onto the situation, then their objectives are altogether more villainous...

...The key thing here is the good-natured inventiveness of the enterprise. It's wholesome and resourceful, the filmic equivalent of a Blue Peter empty-toilet-roll-and-sticky-back-plastic model. Where the stirring final scenes of E.T. are set in a misty, flashlight-illuminated Californian forest, The Glitterball's climax takes place in the biscuit aisle of a Hertfordshire supermarket. For this alone, it deserves a pat on the back.

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 9:35 am
by antnield
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Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 9:10 am
by MichaelB
Full specs announced:
The Children’s Film Foundation Collection
Outer Space

A blast from the past for nostalgia fans and something different for their kids; the sixth DVD volume from The Children’s Film Foundation Collection contains three of the CFF’s finest science fiction adventures: Supersonic Saucer (1956), Kadoyng (1972) and the oft-requested classic The Glitterball (1977).

Outer Space is released on 22 September 2014 as part of the BFI’s Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder, a nationwide celebration of Sci-Fi film and TV.

Supersonic Saucer tells the heart-warming story of Meba, an adorable baby flying saucer from Venus with otherworldly powers who arrives on an exploratory mission to Earth. Adopted by a group of children, he helps the youngsters prevent a robbery at their school.

In the delightful Kadoyng it looks as if nothing can stop the village of Byway being demolished to make way for a new motorway. Until, that is, a jovial visitor with an unusual appendage descends from the planet Stoikal and helps a trio of children foil the construction work. This enjoyable escapade stars stalwart comic actor Bill Owen (Last of the Summer Wine).

The award-winning The Glitterball sees two young boys come to the aid of a tiny spherical alien who is trying to return to its mothership while being pursued by both the Air Force and a devious petty crook. This perennial CFF favourite stars veteran British character actor Ron Pember.

For over 30 years the Children's Film Foundation produced quality entertainment for young audiences, employing the cream of British filmmaking talent. Newly transferred from the best available elements held in the BFI National Archive, these much-loved and fondly remembered films finally return to the screen after many years out of distribution in specially curated DVD releases from the BFI.

Special features
* Brand new High Definition transfers of all the films
* Illustrated booklet with extensive credits and new essays by The Glitterball director Harley Cokeliss, Alex Davidson, Robert Shail and Vic Pratt

Product details
RRP: £19.99 / cat. no. BFIV972 / Cert U
UK / 1956 + 1972 + 1977 / black and white, and colour / 48 mins + 58 mins + 54 mins / DVD9 / Dolby Digital mono 2.0 audio (224 kbps) / Original aspect ratios 1.33:1 + 1.66:1 (16x9 anamorphic) + 1.85:1 (16x9 anamorphic)

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 5:59 pm
by antnield
Mondo Digital on Outer Space.

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:58 am
by swo17
Nov 23
CHILDREN'S FILM FOUNDATION: MASTERS OF VENUS (DVD)
A Film By Ernest Morris

For over 30 years, the Children's Film Foundation produced quality entertainment for young audiences, employing the cream of British filmmaking talent.

Released for the first time on DVD is Masters of Venus, an out of this world science fiction serial by Ernest Morris (The Vise, Richard the Lionheart).

Starring Norman Wooland (The Guns of Navarone, Hamlet) and Mandy Harper (Four Winds Island), Masters of Venus tells the story of a spaceship from Earth which lands on the planet Venus where the crew meet a race of beings that they suspect are descended from the lost city of Atlantis.

Special features

•TBC

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2016 11:20 am
by MichaelB
Full specs announced:
Masters of Venus
The Classic Children’s Sci-Fi Adventure Serial


For over 30 years the Children’s Film Foundation produced quality entertainment for young audiences, employing the cream of British filmmaking talent and many young cast members that are household names today. Newly transferred from the best available elements held at the BFI National Archive, the next release in the BFI’s on-going DVD series is Masters of Venus, an out-of-this-world eight-part Sci-Fi serial by Ernest Morris (The Vise, Richard the Lionheart). Masters of Venus makes its debut on DVD on 18 July 2016 accompanied by a new essay by BFI curator Vic Pratt.

As the rocket ship Astarte is being prepared for its inaugural trip to Venus, a mysterious pair of saboteurs appear hell-bent on thwarting its mission. Pat (Amanda Coxell, Four Winds Island) and Jim (Robin Stewart, Bless This House), the children of the Astarte’s designer, Dr Ballantyne (Norman Wooland, The Guns of Navarone), stumble upon this plot and accidently find themselves launched into space with the ship’s two-man crew.

Upon landing on Venus the Astarte’s crew encounter a race of beings descended from the survivors of the lost city of Atlantis. But how will they be received by their hosts? And will they ever make back to Earth? Join us on this thrilling journey to find out…

Special features
• Brand new High Definition transfers of the entire serial
• New essay by BFI National Archive curator (Fiction) Vic Pratt

Product details
RRP: £19.99/ Cat. no. BFIV2072 / Cert PG
UK / 1962 / black and white / 122 mins / English Language / DVD9 / original aspect ratio 1.66:1 / PCM 2.0 mono (48kHz/16-bit)

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:13 am
by MichaelB
Confirmed for October 22:
Children’s Film Foundation Bumper Box

For over 30 years The Children’s Film Foundation produced quality entertainment for young audiences, employing the cream of British filmmaking talent. Unavailable for years, these fondly–remembered films make a welcome return in newly remastered editions. This DVD box set contains nine newly unearthed gems: Peril for the Guy, Cup Fever, Mr Horatio Knibbles, Anoop and the Elephant, The Zoo Robbery, The Battle of Billy’s Pond, One Hour to Zero, 4D Special Agents and finally Pop Pirates which stars rock legend Roger Daltrey!

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 8:05 am
by What A Disgrace
I've recently become an uncle. I'm interested in these sets for my own cinephilic purposes, but would any of them potentially grab the interest of a young child today? He's only one year old at this time, but in a few years, he'll be watching cartoons and swiping his smartphone, so I'm keen to provide some form of enjoyable imaginative stimuli.

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 8:15 am
by AidanKing
I can't help particularly with the Children's Film Foundation films, but my son enjoyed Night Mail when we showed it to him when he was aged about two and a half to three years. As a result, we also got him quite a few of the British Transport Films sets. He watched these frequently until he was about eight or nine. He also liked the Lotte Reiniger Fairy Tale films set.

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 2:39 pm
by jazzo
These discs started coming out right around the birth of my daughter. She's five now, and my son, seven, and I, coincidentally enough, was about to start showing the CFF discs from the first volume on this coming week. They have a pretty good repertoire of films under their belt already, and are far more patient than I ever was at their age, so I’ll try to post their reactions to each once we go through them.

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 3:08 pm
by jazzo
Also, as soon as the weather gets cooler, I'm going to show them The Dog Who Stopped the War and The Peanut Butter Solution, not in any way related to the CFF, but a couple of classic Canadian films from my youth.

My kids love The Red Balloon and Paddle to the Sea, too, (both also fondly remembered from my youth, projected in class on 16 mm), so if someone could release this lost treasure sometime, I would be eternally happy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7xW-vVX74s

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 3:04 pm
by Feego
As an American, I'm totally unfamiliar with the CFF and the films released in this DVD series, with one notable exception. I have fond memories of watching Mr. Horatio Knibbles around Easter time on the Disney channel in the early 90s. Not remembering the title, I finally stumbled upon it on YouTube a year or so back. It's still pretty charming, perhaps because everyone plays it so straight. The rabbit costume is terrifying to me now, but as a kid I accepted it as perfectly natural.

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2018 8:08 am
by MichaelB
Full specs announced:

Image
Children’s Film Foundation Bumper Box
9 films on 3 DVDs

Released on 22 October 2018


• Peril for the Guy
• Cup Fever
• Mr Horatio Knibbles
• Anoop and the Elephant
• The Zoo Robbery
• The Battle of Billy’s Pond
• One Hour to Zero
• 4D Special Agents
• Pop Pirates

A wizard weekend for all the family is guaranteed with this carefully curated assortment of tasty cinematic treats from the Children’s Film Foundation: Britain’s best-loved and longest-running producer of quality cinema entertainment for kids of all ages. In this Bumper Box, released on 22 October 2018, the BFI brings together nine fantastic films on 3 discs with special features including a brand new documentary about the CFF.

Stand well back for 1960s bonfire-night fun in Peril for the Guy (1956), have a classic kick-about with George Best and Bobby Charlton at Manchester United in Cup Fever (1965) and share your orange squash with an incredible invisible rabbit in Mr Horatio Knibbles (1970)!

Take your seats in the Big Top for circus hi-jinx with Anoop and the Elephant (1972), befriend the world’s only ice-lolly-loving Yeti in The Zoo Robbery (1973) and become a young 1970s eco-warrior for The Battle of Billy’s Pond (1976).

Attempt to avert nuclear disaster in the nail-biting One Hour to Zero (1976), chase cockney crooks down London’s canals as you join 4D Special Agents (1981) and enlist The Who’s Roger Daltrey to back your 1980s reggae band on Brighton Pier in Pop Pirates (1984)!­

And that’s just the films – there are extras and an illustrated booklet too. Do your film-history revision fun-style with a new interview with veteran CFF writer John Tully (16 mins) and The Children’s Film Foundation Story (84 mins) – a fabulous new feature-length documentary telling the true tale of the Foundation and the talents who worked there. There are interviews with CFF luminaries including John Krish, Harley Cokeliss and a cast of thousands! Last, but not least, there are three 1950s canine crackers from the CFF vaults, Rover Makes Good, Juno Helps and To the Rescue.

Product details
RRP: £29.99/ Cat. no. BFIV2083 / Cert PG
UK / 1956-1984 / colour, black and white / total runtime 507 mins / English language / original aspect ratio 1.37:1 / 3 x DVD9: PAL, 25fps, Dolby Digital 1.0 mono audio (192kbps)

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2018 11:56 am
by domino harvey
What is a "bumper box"? I'm assuming it's a UK phrase, but not sure of the significance. Google wasn't too helpful

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2018 12:00 pm
by MichaelB
The last definition would seem to be the relevant one:

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Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2018 12:06 pm
by domino harvey
I've heard of a bumper crop, I just thought maybe the phrase "bumper box" had a UK-specific meaning for kids, since Google only returned UK results for things like candies (sweets to y'all) and crayons

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:05 pm
by RossyG
Bumper is a word commonly used on children's books and comics in Britain (more so in the 20th Century, but still in use today) to signify that they were bigger than usual.

Examples:
Image Image

I think they're using it here slightly ironically to make it sound like a children's comic annual from the Sixties or Seventies.

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:19 pm
by NABOB OF NOWHERE
There are of course other connotations - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc1IphRx1pk

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2020 7:32 am
by MichaelB
Full specs announced for volume 2:
Children’s Film Foundation
Bumper Box Vol 2

9 films in a 3-disc set, released on 16 March 2020


With Arnold ‘Dad’s Army’ Ridley, Sally ‘Man About the House’ Thomsett, Warren ‘Alf Garnett’ Mitchell, Dennis ‘Minder’ Waterman, Wilfrid ‘Steptoe’ Brambell, Ronnie Barker, Bernard ‘Dr Who’ Cribbins and Bill ‘Heartbeat’ Maynard

Treasure at the Mill (1957)
Wings of Mystery (1963)
Seventy Deadly Pills (1963)
Go Kart Go (1963)
A Ghost of a Chance (1968)
The Sea Children (1973)
Sky Pirates (1976)
The Mine and the Minotaur (1980)
Friend or Foe (1981)

A sizzling Saturday-afternoon sofa-thon is in store with this mouth-watering melange of cinematic corkers from the Children’s Film Foundation: Britain’s best-loved and longest-running producer of quality children’s cinema for kids of all ages. Released in a 3-disc DVD set by the BFI on 16 March 2020, Children’s Film Foundation Bumper Box Vol 2, brings together nine fantastic films and additional special features; witness long-lost sights and sounds of the British Isles in A Letter from the Isle of Wight, A Letter from Wales and A Letter from Ayrshire­ – three 1950s movie-missives; actor-turned-pop idol Simon Fisher Turner spills the beans on working for the CFF in the 1970s and Friend or Foe director John Krish appears in his final filmed interview. Here’s the run-down on these top-drawer vintage feature-film smashers:

Disc 1:
Chase civil war booty in Lone Pine series author Malcolm Saville’s Treasure at the Mill; hunt secret formulas with Arnold ‘Dad’s Army’ Ridley in Wings of Mystery and cheer on Sally ‘Man About the House’ Thomsett and hiss at Warren ‘Alf Garnett’ Mitchell and his Seventy Deadly Pills!

Disc 2:
Step on the gas with Dennis ‘Minder’ Waterman and Wilfrid ‘Steptoe’ Brambell in Go Kart Go, shout Boo! at haunted-house developers Ronnie Barker and his bumbling lackey Bernard ‘Dr Who’ Cribbins in A Ghost of a Chance and save the earth with a tribe of aquatic eco-warriors in The Sea Children.

Disc 3:
Take off for a model-plane Battle of Britain with Bill ‘Heartbeat’ Maynard in Sky Pirates, go underground in The Mine and the Minotaur and face the folly of war in Friend or Foe.

The first pressing includes an illustrated booklet with an essay and notes on the films and extras by BFI Video Producer Vic Pratt.

Product details
RRP: £29.99/ Cat. no. BFIV2082 / Cert PG
UK / 1957–1981 / colour, black and white / total runtime 493 mins / English language / original aspect ratio 1.33:1 / 3 x DVD9: PAL, 25fps, Dolby Digital 1.0 mono audio (192kbps)

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2020 10:22 am
by Michael Kerpan
MichaelB -- Did anyone ever (successfully) movie-ize any of Enid Blyton's books? If not, why not? They seem to have been ready fodder for decent kid's movies.

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2020 7:04 pm
by The Fanciful Norwegian
No idea if they were "successful," but the CFF itself did several serials based on the Famous Five series, two of which (Five on a Treasure Island and Five Have a Mystery to Solve) have DVD editions from the BFI.

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2020 7:27 pm
by Michael Kerpan
I was a fan of her Adventure series in my childhood. ;-)

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2020 4:04 am
by colinr0380
Aside from the CFF production there were a couple of ITV TV series of Famous Five (one in the late 1970s and the other in the mid 1990s I think), but other than that not really any film adaptations. Which probably makes sense as children's oriented material has always seemed to have been a lot more television focused than theatrical, with at in their heyday of the 80s to mid 2000s both the BBC and ITV having post-school hours of programming to fill from 3 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. on weekdays that made sense to slot series into (and now both broadcasters have entire digital channels to fill up, though that has led to children's orientated programming almost completely disappearing from the 'mainstream' channels, aside from Doctor Who). That's what made Aardman's films so unique because they didn't really come out of that children's television block but forged their own path through their Oscar winning shorts, beloved adverts and music videos into features (though even there they specifically seemed to target the Shaun the Sheep series at a younger children audience of the CBBC channel later on)

I remember being a bit miffed at that Famous Five series getting so focused on as a kid, as I was more in the Secret Seven gang, which has not been adapted at all!

Re: Children's Film Foundation

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2020 10:42 am
by Michael Kerpan
I don't think my library had any series other than the Adventure one (which I loved).