Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER Editorial Board: Edgar Anstey, Geoffrey Bell, Arthur Elton, John Taylor, Basil Wright NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1946 VOL 6 NO 54 PUBLISHED BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl 50 DOCUMENTARY GOES TO TOWN 51 PERSPECTIVE 52 NOTES OF THE MONTH 53 WARTIME WEDDING by John Shearman 54 DOCUMENTARY FILM REVIEWS 55 SOCIETY, SCIENCE AND MOVIE by a Psychiatrist Annual subscription 6s. (published six times a year) 56 GRIERSON TAKES STOCK 58 MALAYAN ROAD-SHOW 64 BOOK REVIEW GRIERSON ON DOCUMENTARY 64 MUNICIPAL CINEMA IN NORWAY Bulk orders up to 50 copies for schools and Film Societies DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER first appeared in January, 1940, as a duplicated sheet for circulation to private subscribers. The first issue aroused sufficient interest to justify the appearance of No. 2 as a printed magazine which has since achieved an influential circulation in Britain and overseas, but has continued to be available only to the subscriber. Now. with our fifty-fourth issue, we go out to the newsagents and the booksellers and prepare to welcome new readers. Documentary News Letter was founded to serve a specific need. With the outbreak of war in 1939 it became clear to a group of practitioners in the documentary field — experts in production and distribution — that they must somehow become articulate in the interests of the proper use of the film for purposes of wartime information and instruction. The members of the original Editorial Board had most of them been associated with the documentary film movement since its earliest days. Working with John Grierson first at the Empire Marketing Board and later with the Post Office Film Unit they had collaborated in developing techniques of documentary production and distribution. When the war began they had expected to find that the Government would immediately use the film as an instrument of public defence, that documentary filmmakers would be mobilised to inform the public of the vital issues involved and to assist in the preparation of the Armed Forces and the civil population for the hard times ahead. It was assumed that the newly established Ministry of Information would see this as one of its principal functions. Yet although the quality of British documentary film making was recognised in every country in the world, although indeed the documentary film had come to be widely regarded as the only original British contribution to the development of the film medium, the Ministry of Information ignored the instrument which lay ready to its hand. It was almost exclusively to combat this combination of lethargy and antagonism that the group of documentary film experts associated with Film Centre decided that they must appeal to enlightened opinion throughout the country in the interests of an efficient use of the documentary film. Other methods besides the publication of D.N.L. were also used in the campaign that followed — articles in other publications, lectures, private meetings with politicians and civil servants — and eventually the Ministry of Information abandoned its early film policy of tentatively employing a few threadbare fictional themes and turned to its task of using the full powers of the medium. D.N.L. continued to advocate forward-looking policies, the planning of films and programmes of films into an integrated pattern which would give validity and meaning to the post-war democratic world as well as assist in the waging of the day-to-day battle. And now, with the documentary film moving forward into its peacetime phase, the Editorial Board of D.N.L. feels that the time has come for the paper to reach a wider circle of readers. As a result of the war documentary films have come to be accepted by large numbers of cinemagoers and are regarded by most teachers, industrialists, civil servants and scientists as part of their future professional pattern of activity. To readers of all five types — the cinemagoer, the scientist, the teacher, the civil servant and the industrialist — D.N.L. in its new form will seek to appeal, believing that they will find common ground in the discussion of the relationship between the film and the problems and tasks of these difficult days. Commercial developments in the documentary field which have lately resulted in the production of such outstanding films as Theirs is the Glory and The Way We Live may in some quarters be held to demonstrate that documentary has now been accepted by the film industry as a necessary and permanent part of its commercial activity, that the voice crying in the wilderness has made the wilderness blossom as the rose and may well now remain silent and enjoy its achievement. We do not agree. The easier it becomes to make and distribute documentary films the more danger there is that they will become facile in manner and empty of ideas, and against such dangers D.N.L. will be vigilant. Members of the Board have lately visited each of the five continents in the course of their production activities and everywhere they have found an appetite for knowledge of the factual film. In the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, India, Burma and Malaya plans are under discussion or in operation for the wide use of the film of fact for information and instruction. Documentary News Letter will seek to keep readers in these countries informed of what goes on in the world of documentary beyond their shores ; and it will welcome news of their own contributions to documentary development.