BFI ScreenOnline; Derek Jacobi on the GPO Film Unit

My god, the BFI are fantastic. This interactive presentation, starring the excellent Derek Jacobi, explains the development of the GPO Film Unit. The GPO (General Post Office) regulated the early development of the communications industry in Britain, with BT (British Telecommunications), and the Royal Mail being the direct descendants. The most famous example of the GPO Film Unit’s work is Night Mail (1936), which presents the complex distribution of mail by train, and features a poem by WH Auden, the opening lines of which (“This is the Night Mail crossing the border / Bringing the cheque and the postal order”) was used in a 1980’s British Rail advert.

The presentation takes around 30 minutes, and you can opt out of seeing certain clips if you prefer (although they’re all worth a look, in my opinion), but pay attention, as Derek will berate you for hanging around, or give you a withering response if you give a really stupid answer to a question. Quite right, too! My only complaint is that I really wanted to see full-length versions of the films, but hopefully the BFI will put on a season of this material, or perhaps even release a DVD. The GPO Film Unit became the Crown Film Unit during the Second World War, which became the COI (Central Office of Information) after 1945, which leads me to my series of articles on PIFs. Ahem. This sort of presentation is exactly what I’d like to see for the output of the Crown Film Unit and the COI, so let’s hope there’s more of this in the future!

About this entry

By Tanya Jones
Posted on Tuesday, September 16 2008 @ 2:14 pm
Categorised in Film
Tagged with PIF, classic films
4 comments

Comments

My only complaint is that I really wanted to see full-length versions of the films, but hopefully the BFI will put on a season of this material, or perhaps even release a DVD.

The BFI is doing just that - Love Letters and Live Wires, a big-screen compilation of eight GPO shorts (including Night Mail), went on release last Friday and I believe is playing in at least 35 cinemas around the country.

Meanwhile, the first of three GPO double-disc DVD sets is going on sale tomorrow, with volumes two and three to follow in early and mid-2009. Volume one, Addressing the Nation, covers the Unit’s work from 1933 to 1935, and includes all the obvious titles from the early years (including the major masterpieces Song of Ceylon and Granton Trawler) alongside a great many fascinating rarities.

There’s also a lot of GPO material on the rest of the BFI Screenonline site - http://www.screenonline.org.uk

And many thanks for your kind comments on the Derek Jacobi presentation: it was great fun to work on.

By Michael Brooke
September 21, 2008 @ 9:59 pm

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Oh, this is brilliant! I did try and search for information on DVDs or cinema releases, but couldn’t find anything. Thanks ever so much!

By Tanya Jones
September 22, 2008 @ 8:34 am

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And…I missed the Exeter showing yesterday! Agh! I’ll try and make the London showing next month; http://www.bfi.org.uk/releases/gpo/

Thanks for letting me know anyway, Michael. I’ve pre-ordered the first DVD and am bouncing up and down in excitement.

By Tanya Jones
September 22, 2008 @ 9:12 am

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Hi Tanya, Thanks for this - you might also like the others in the BFI Archive Interactive Series:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/archiveinteractives…
And if you’d like to see what we’ve done along broadly similar lines for the National Theatre and Tate, have a look here:
http://www.martinpercy.com

By Martin Percy
October 06, 2008 @ 1:13 pm

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