Update

Cataloguing the expansive selection of films that form the British Council’s documentary archive was always going to be a complex task. There are a number of considerations to take into account, from deciding on methods of categorization, to deciphering the date of release if different to the date of completion. With this in mind when

TIME/IMAGE may have, perhaps, found the black sheep amongst the many filmmakers of the BC Film Archive – former head of documentary at the BBC and one time collaborator of John Grierson, Paul Rotha. Originally born Paul Thompson, Rotha was an uncompromising filmmaker and intellectual. After being told to change his name by one of his university professors, Rotha wasted

With everyone eager to get the project set up and running in order to make the most out of the British Council’s Film Archive, time is most certainly of the essence. So, after spending all day rushing around the office, hard at it, what can be a better escape than hiding away underground, locking yourself up in

On Wednesday, three of us decided to head over to the National Archives at Kew to investigate some of the records held on the British Council films. We were aware that there were a lot of separate files held within the catalogue, but I don’t think we were quite expecting to find what we did.

From the early nineteen thirties, for a period of about twenty years, the British Council was an enthusiastic commissioner and distributor of documentaries from some of the finest film makers of the time, designed to showcase Britain to the outside world. Today, these films – over 400 of them –  are looked after by the BFI in their archives,