The GPO Film Unit Collections
Moderator: MichaelB
- MichaelB
- Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
- Location: Worthing
- Contact:
Re: The GPO Film Unit Collections
Beaver on volume 3.
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- Joined: Fri May 29, 2009 8:30 am
- MichaelB
- Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
- Location: Worthing
- Contact:
Re: The GPO Film Unit Collections
The collected output of the GPO Film Unit has just been added to Unesco's UK Memory of the World Register, along with the surviving output of the Mitchell & Kenyon company.
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- Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 1:11 am
Re: The GPO Film Unit Collections
Has anyone else had problems with the audio for "N or NW" on GPO Vol. 2? On my copy, that film plays completely silent, but all the other films on the DVD play correctly.
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: The GPO Film Unit Collections
My copy plays it with sound.
- antnield
- Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:59 pm
- Location: Cheltenham, England
Re: The GPO Film Unit Collections
New book to be published 28th October: The Projection of Britain - A History of the GPO Film Unit
The General Post Office (GPO) Film Unit sat at the creative epicentre of Britain in the 1930s. It nurtured a vital crop of artistic talent, built a forum for a new kind of cinematic address and created Britain's first self-consciously national cinema. In 2011, UNESCO added its work to the UK Memory of the World Register, recognising its status as part of Britain's cultural heritage.
Elements of the GPO Film Unit's story are well known: John Grierson's development of documentary cinema; the influence of Mass Observation and Surrealism on its cinematic vision; the Watt-Auden-Britten collaboration, Night Mail. The Projection of Britain: A History of the GPO Film Unit brings together primary materials and critical appraisals to revisit, re-contextualise and revitalise these seminal moments in British cinema. Here, the insights of an archivist, a musicologist, a design historian, a sports historian, a geographer and a postman - among others - have been edited into a rich critical archaeology of a compelling moment in cinematic history. Interspersed with these essays are primary materials - memoirs, magazine articles, posters and government documents - that detail everything from Alberto Cavalcanti's vision for the documentary movement, to a claim for the clothes Humphrey Jennings lost while shooting on location.
In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the GPO Film Unit and its work, on the big screen, in DVD boxsets and on the web. The Projection of Britain ties together the Unit's diverse artistic, historical and cultural threads into an essential one-stop resource. Provocative, imaginative and ambitious, this expansive study is the definitive companion to an extraordinary episode in cinematic history.
- MichaelB
- Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
- Location: Worthing
- Contact:
Re: The GPO Film Unit Collections
Indeed - and co-editor Scott Anthony has contributed to pretty much all of the BFI's GPO-related projects over the past few years: you'll find his name popping up regularly in the DVD booklets and he also wrote the BFI monograph on Night Mail, and the script for Derek Jacobi's interactive GPO tour. So readers will be in very safe hands.
- MichaelB
- Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
- Location: Worthing
- Contact:
Re: The GPO Film Unit Collections
The blissfully bonkers The Fairy of the Phone (William Coldstream, 1936) has just been published on The Space - and really has to be seen to be believed.
- What A Disgrace
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 10:34 pm
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Re: The GPO Film Unit Collections
I finally finished volume 3 of this fantastic series, and the liner notes mention Harry Watt's Target For Tonight at least twice. Could the BFI possibly release this film on DVD or Blu-ray in the future, or has it already appeared?
- Ashirg
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:10 am
- Location: Atlanta
Re: The GPO Film Unit Collections
It was released by Simply Media with Imperial War Museums on a standalone disc with a couple of other shorts as extras.