Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER 51 PERSPECTIVE The word documentary, like the words Communism, Miner, Planning, Proust or Chinese Food, raises very mixed emotions in people's minds. To some it is a holy word to be spoken in the sort of voice reserved for visiting the sick or attending the funerals of unloved relatives. To others it is a word for hissing. It is odd, that after eighteen years such a very ordinary utilitarian word can still arouse such passions. Not only important but quite surprising in view of the fact that scarcely anybody knows what it means. It has been defined often enough both by the documentary film makers and by their friends — and enemies — in other spheres of interest. But definitions have a habit of missing the full implication of the meaning: even the famous "creative treatment of actuality" was only true of certain documentaries at a certain time. It is perhaps this factor of change and growth in the meaning of the word that has caused the trouble. You can pack a lot of history into eighteen years ; looking back the picture becomes a good deal clearer. The Basis The basis of the documentary thesis as developed in the late twenties was that the structure of Western civilisation had become so complex that ordinary people found themselves ill-adapted to understand the issues of the day and their own position and responsibility in relation to these issues. Democracy was in danger of collapse, because its citizens did not know how to make it work. The weakness, therefore, was essentially in the realm of public education and information. The vast possibilities of the new mass media (including the then rapidly developing radio) had not been spotted as the key to the problem. Film, because of its obvious mass popularity, and the vividness of the visual image, which, incidentally, remains, despite sound, the essential lingua franca, was an obvious choice as a medium in which to put the theory into practice. It is significant that the opportunity arose from a specific national need — Britain's trade problem in the twenties and the international relations which went with it. A new conception of Empire was being forced on Whitehall. The formation of the Empire Marketing Board in 1926, with Sir Stephen Tallents as Secretary, was in part a reflection of the failure of successive British governments to elucidate the facts and responsibilities of Empire to the British people. Thus, while the word "marketing" provided terms of reference which were apparently narrow, the fact was that to revivify the hardening arteries of trade it was necessary to achieve a new consciousness among ordinary people in Britain and overseas. "Bringing Alive" During its all too brief life, the EMB succeeded in planning for the first time the co-ordination of mass media for the purposes of public information. The policy was to "bring alive" to the people at large the facts and implications of the Commonwealth structure. "Bringing alive" became an important slogan, for it meant that the information given had to be related closely to the experience of ordinary people. It had to give them a sense of participation in the Commonwealth. Abstractions were useless. What was needed was to give an excitement and vividness to the ordinary realities of day-today life and activity : to give, for instance, to the farm worker a sense of his close relationship with the town people who depended on his products for their breakfasts, and vice versa. Under Tallents, the EMB developed a number of techniques. Local exhibitions were opened in provincial cities, particularly in the great manufacturing areas. These were always in the main shopping area, very often in an empty store, and usually included a cinema. Widespread poster campaigns were run, and in these the new conception of participation was indicated by the abandonment of such cold symbols as the angular Wembley lion and the adoption of the vivid figure of a British steelworker. More importantly still, the EMB established a large number of three-panelled permanent poster boards in towns and cities all over the British Isles. These were used largely to increase public consciousness and knowledge of Commonwealth affairs. The posters on these boards were designed by noted artists and became, in a sense, public picture galleries. Both the ideology and style of EMB activities stemmed largely from the collaboration between Tallents and John Grierson, and in most respects, the work of Grierson's documentary film group within the EMB acted as a pacemaker. From the experiments and activities of the film unit came new conceptions of spreading information. Specialisation It was in the development of different types of films for different audience, and especially in gaining access to people outside the public cinemas, that the important distinction between background and foreground information first became clear. This was to become a vital principle in the development of the educational function of the documentary film. The limitation of screen time available in public cinemas made it essential to find other means by which the EMB films could reach a sufficiently large cross-section of the community to make their production worth while. The institution of non-theatrical free roadshows, and of the EMB free lending library of films, provided for the needs (then hardly assessed) of both child and adult audiences. Later on, the experience gained by Grierson and his colleagues from studying the reactions of schoolchildren to their films led to the realisation that the purpose of the documentary film did not rest in the selection and treatment of the subject-matter alone, but that for any given subject it would usually be necessary to provide several films differing in perspective. Hence the formulation at this time of the foreground and background distinction. Over-simplified, this distinction is that foreground information deals with the specific, while background information deals with the more general scene in relation to which the specific is taking place. The problem of relating the background Commonwealth story to the specific day-to-day informational jobs was not, in fact, fully solved, owing largely to the overall failure in education about the Commonwealth, which was, and still is, one of the most sensational vacancies in the mental and spiritual make-up of the British electorate. More, perhaps, might have been achieved had not the EMB been abolished, with the result that its embryo information services were transferred to the GPO. Public Relations At the GPO, Tallents, Grierson, and the documentary group faced a new and urgent task. A new phrase — Public Relations — was taken into the documentary field. The Post Offices of Britain were a byword for inefficiency, gloominess and a general old-fashioned atmosphere. They were the front by which the public judged the Post Office, and they effectually concealed a hundred and one superbly efficient jobs. A physical job of rebuilding, such as was undertaken at the time, was not a sufficient solution. Behind it all was the question of the morale of the Post Office staff as a whole. The first terms of reference of the GPO Film Unit were, then, to provide for the staff an understanding of their individual relations to the over-all ramifications of GPO activities, to explain organisation as a whole, and to relate department to department in an exciting and imaginative manner. The first films made by the GPO Film Unit achieved something over and beyond their purpose. They were (continued on page 60)