Listen to Britain
British Classics
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Documentary, Short Films, War, UR
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.
Up Next in British Classics
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Spare Time
Humphrey Jennings epitomises the artist-filmmaker and this poetic evocation of ordinary people enjoying well-earned time away from the mill, mine, or foundry is a forerunner to Jennings’ later wartime greats such as Listen to Britain. Joyous shots of people either pigeon fancying, ballroom dan...
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We Are the Lambeth Boys
Karel Reisz’s honest and sympathetic depiction of South London teens aimed to challenge the media perception of ‘Teddy Boys’, and would be one of the last films to appear under the Free Cinema banner. One of the key elements of the Free Cinema films was the sympathetic representation of wor...
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Pressure
Hailed as Britain's first black feature film, Pressure is a hard-hitting, honest document of the plight of disenchanted British-born black youths. Set in 1970s London, it tells the story of Tony, a bright school-leaver, son of West Indian immigrants, who finds himself torn between his parents' ch...
