Listen to Britain
British Film Institute
•
20m
Directed by Humphrey Jennings & Stewart McAllister • Documentary • 1942 • 19 minutes
Documentary, public information film, morale booster; propaganda film – all descriptions that apply to Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister's extraordinary war-time film. Using his customary combination of poetry and propaganda, Jennings constructs a collage of the various people and classes of Britain, at home and at work, at war and at peace. The result, while not overtly proselytising, sounded a clear clarion call to internal and international audiences to fight and save Great Britain from the onslaught of war.
The film was nominated for the inaugural Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 1943.
Up Next in British Film Institute
-
London Can Take It
Directed by Humphrey Jennings & Harry Watt • Documentary • 1940 • 10 minutes
Humphrey Jennings and Harry Watt’s famous film, produced at the GPO film unit, is an enduring example of British self-mythology and rousing evidence of the artistic potential of supposed propaganda. A hymn to the Br...
-
Night Mail
Directed by Harry Watt & Basil Charles Wright • Documentary • 1936 • 23 minutes
A cornerstone of British documentary, Harry Watt and Basil Wright's NIGHT MAIL, with music by Benjamin Britten and verse by W.H. Auden, stands as a beacon for John Grierson's original purpose for documentary - to...
-
The Silent Village
Directed by Humphrey Jennings • Documentary • 1943 • 36 minutes
The villagers of Cwmgiedd, southwest Wales, are the stars of Humphrey Jennings’ unforgettably inventive drama-doc. At Lidice, Czechoslovakia, a mining community’s entire male population was executed by the Nazis in 1942. Jennings (o...
