The collection

• Periods
• Places
• Subjects
• Productions
• Film-makers

Selected films

Contact and access

The bfi National Film And Television Archive (NFTVA), Non-fiction collection

Unlike some of the major film archives which emerged in Europe and North America in the 1930s, the National Film and Television Archive (founded in 1935 as the National Film Library) was quick to embrace documentary and non fiction and has always tried to give the 'film of record' equal standing with the 'Art of Cinema' in its collecting, preservation, and access work. This has resulted in the existence of one of the largest and most diverse non-fiction moving image collections in the world, now numbering more than 100,000 titles, many of which do not exist anywhere else. The collection includes all the classic 'Documentary' titles – films such as 'Song of Ceylon' (1934), 'Nightmail' (1936), 'A Diary for Timothy' (1946) – as well as a great variety of other non-fiction material.

The NFTVA acts as preservation agent for the National Archives, preserving and (where appropriate) making available those film and video productions sponsored by government departments and agencies which have been selected by the National Archives for permanent retention.

With this partial exception, the NFTVA has no legal power to acquire particular titles into the collection. In the absence of any system of legal deposit for film and video, it has had to depend almost entirely on donation to add to its collection. Invariably, this has resulted in gaps in the Archive's holdings which reflect both the actual availability of materials and the limited resources available for their acquisition, as well as the changing priorities of those staff who, over the years, have been responsible for building the collection.

Periods

The earliest British film known to survive is Birt Acres's record of the 1895 Derby at Epsom, rediscovered a century later and now preserved in the NFTVA. Acquisitions for 2003 include documentaries made by students at the National Film and Television School for their 2002 graduations. In between, key periods and their dominant non-fiction themes are the following:

Victorian and Edwardian - Almost exclusively actuality film-making, together with other nascent categories (some emerging from within the actuality genre) such as news reportage and early 'personal' film-making.

1910s and 1920s - The development of newsreel and travelogue, and, especially, of the exploration and ethnographic film in the 1910s and educational film-making in the 1920s.

1930s - Profoundly important for the emergence of the British documentary movement in all its official, corporate and independent manifestations, the appearance of more radical 'alternative' viewpoints, the development and increasingly widespread use of 16mm, and of film specifically designed for education, training or promotion as well as art and entertainment.

1940s - The first half of the decade moves the documentary tradition into the realm of official wartime film-making. Here, NFTVA holdings are complementary to, and to some extent, overlap with, those of the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive. The collection clearly reflects the diffusion of film-making personnel across the restructured public and other documentary sectors.

1950s and 1960s - The heyday of the post-war documentary units, but chiefly significant as the period in which the proponents of Free Cinema and similarly inspired film-makers (many working under the auspices of the bfi's own Experimental Film Fund) emerged to challenge traditional forms with an increasingly open style. At the turn of the decade there are important crossovers in style, technology and personnel between some early television documentaries and their cinema and non-theatrical equivalents. Film is more widely used than ever before for a variety of 'non-aesthetic' purposes and examples from many sources are preserved by the NFTVA. There is also an increasing use of colour in non-fiction film-making in this period.

1970s to the Present - Technologically, the gradual move away from 16mm to various video formats as the predominant technology for non-theatrically distributed non-fiction productions is a key theme of this period. This is also the final period of the traditional 'film unit' production, and notable for the emergence of numerous independent collectives, workshops and other groups making challenging experimental or political documentaries. Today the continual development of ever-more accessible digital moving image technology results in a greater proliferation of non-broadcast documentary and non-fiction production than ever before, and the NFTVA is making great efforts to fully represent this breadth of material through its current collecting activities.

Places

As the national moving image collection for the UK (and in addition, having been building its collections for 40 years before the first regional film archives emerged), the NFTVA holds a non-fiction collection that includes representation of all the United Kingdom's nations and regions. With regional archives now fully established, any material on offer which is deemed to be of predominantly regional interest is directed towards the archive concerned, though of course much which is of national importance incidentally relates to particular regions or localities.

Two additional points should be borne in mind:

The International Dimension - While the NFTVA today concentrates its efforts on British and British-related materials, the collection does include examples of key titles produced overseas. Though these may simply have been acquired prior to the narrowing of the Archive's collecting remit, they may also been brought in because they are considered to be important aids to understanding British film culture. For example, the ETV Collection, currently being accessioned, consists mostly of films made in countries which are part of the former Eastern Bloc. As a collection, these represent an important chapter in the histories of both non-theatrical distribution and the use of film by the post-war Left.

The London Dimension - The one region of the UK which is disproportionately reflected in the NFTVA collection, is the Greater London area. This follows, firstly, from the traditionally centralised nature of British society, from the consequent tendency for films deemed to be of 'national importance' to be frequently filmed in London (which has long been the traditional centre of the British film industry itself), and, finally, from the fact that no recognised public sector regional film archive for London was set up as the regional archive movement developed. The NFTVA is currently actively considering how to extend its functionality in relation to London.

Subjects

The NFTVA considers all non-fiction material from several points of view, with that of moving image as historical record being as important as its place within Britain's moving image culture. In consequence there is a clear relationship between the NFTVA's non-fiction holdings and those of the other public sector moving image archives. While all topics of relevance to the United Kingdom are covered to a greater or lesser degree, particular strengths include such subjects (described further below) as national identity, industry, location, transport, gender, sport, leisure and arts, and science and natural history.

National Identity - Unsurprisingly, Britain's twentieth century imperial history is strongly reflected in the collection. Imperial or royal topics were extremely popular in early cinema, with film-makers responding to the ready availability of such spectacle for their subject matter as well as to a country-wide audience who suddenly had access to metropolitan activities through this new medium. The filming of actual events of the Boer War went hand in hand with the reconstruction of some of those events for the camera, and played an important part in the development of film as reportage. Having once established their place in cinema programmes, imperial and Commonwealth subjects continued to be mainstays of the newsreel in later years, while Britain's imperial role was frequently the main focus – or, at least, the subtext – of many 1930s official documentaries. In addition, a large proportion of the NFTVA's collection of amateur films are home movies made by those involved in Britain's colonial experience in the Indian sub-continent, Africa, and elsewhere, such as the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, and the diplomats Sir Clarmont Skrine and George Sherriff.

Much official film and video produced even today is designed specifically to promote Britain abroad or to influence the British public's sense of citizenship. More subtly, documentary film-makers of the 1930s and later have often drawn on contrasting facets of 'Britishness', with themes such as the modernity represented by industrialisation or the continuity and stability represented by rural life. Britain's changing cultural makeup has been dealt with by both observational and political film-makers from the late 1950s onwards, most recently by groups from ethnic minority communities such as the Black Audio Film Collective or Sankofa, both of which are represented in the NFTVA.

Industry - The coal industry provides a strikingly good example of this range of film-making in relation to a single industry. The work of the National Coal Board film unit, set up after post-war nationalisation, encompassed instructional and training films for those working in the mines, documentaries on the industry intended for wider distribution, and the long-running 'Mining Review' (later 'Review'), a cine-magazine which was distributed to cinemas as well as to non-theatrical venues in mining communities between 1947 and 1982 (see for example, an item from Mining Review featuring actor Paul Robeson, in 'Mining Review 2nd year No. 11'). The 'official' moving image record of the coal industry is complemented by examples from elsewhere (from early factory gate films outside collieries, through video production relating to the final chapters of Britain's mining history). All of this material can be considered alongside television programmes relating to the coal industry and feature films using it as a backdrop for drama.

All other major UK industries are covered in the collection with engineering, manufacturing and construction being particularly well represented, and areas such as agriculture, fisheries and technological and service sectors also covered.

Urban, Rural and 'Exotic' Locations - Early actuality films document the urban (and, less frequently, the rural) landscapes of their day, a particularly important consideration where such locations have changed substantially over the years. Films shot abroad developed into the Travelogue (which could also encompass British locations). The fabric and meaning of urban and rural life were popular visual – and sometimes ideological – themes for the documentary film as it developed during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, as is demonstrated by such contrasting NFTVA-held titles as 'Around the Village Green' (1937) and 'The Big City' (1940) or 'Down London River' (1959). Film was also used to document official urban planning, and many titles in the Archive must play a unique part in any research into these activities.

Transport - As moving image technology was developing in the early years of the twentieth century, so, too, was mechanised transport. Each of these developments can be seen as both paralleling and influencing the other. The term 'phantom ride' is applied to the many early films shot with a camera mounted at the front of a train or other moving vehicle, and the NFTVA holds many examples. Many street scene actualities often prominently feature urban transport. Even from the early days, commercial and public sector interests were at the forefront of non-fiction film-making, using their own in-house production units or commissioning others. The NFTVA holds films from, for example, Ford Motors, British Airways and the various railway companies. One of its most important collections is the output of British Transport Films, which covers the post-war development, and activities of the nationalised rail, waterways and London Transport networks.

Gender - An interesting thread running through the NFTVA's non-fiction collection is the work of women film-makers. These include directors as disparate as Stella Court-Treatt and Kay Mander whose work rarely deals explicitly with gender issues; others such as Jill Craigie, who made efforts to promote women's causes; and some, like the London Women's Film Group or the Sheffield Film Co-op in the 1970s, which were, in part, motivated precisely by an interest in the use of the moving image as a medium for addressing feminist concerns. More generally, issues of work and domesticity are themes reflected throughout the collection.

Sport, Leisure and Arts - Sporting events (such as horse racing, football, rugby, cricket and boxing) were popular subjects for actuality film-makers, newsfilm producers and sometimes even the more formal documentary makers. In addition, motor racing was recorded particularly by film units with a corporate interest in the sport, such as those of Shell and British Petroleum. Numerous films held in the NFTVA document British art and artists (in the broadest sense) and often originated from organisations or people involved in some artistic activity, such as the Arts Council, formerly a prolific producer and distributor of films and videos about and by artists, or the late Lord Wakehurst, who was for many years Governor of the Royal Ballet. Some non-fiction work is deliberately structured around the synergy between film and other arts, most notably the non-visual forms of poetry and music.

Science and Natural History - Film, and, later, video, have both been used in actually conducting and in documenting scientific research, as well as in spreading scientific knowledge. Some major advances in cinematic technique – for example, Percy Smith's and J V Durden's use of micro-cinematography and time-lapse – were developed by British film-makers dealing in scientific subjects. Examples of Alfred Haddon's pioneering ethnographic film-making are also held by the NFTVA. A particularly important subset of the Archive's science-related holdings are those films dealing with the history of medicine and medical or surgical procedures, alongside those which didactically promote health issues. This reflects the fact that some parts of the collection originate from organisations such as the (Royal) London Hospital and the Health Education Council.

Production Types

The main generic categories covered by the NFTVA's non-fiction collection correspond broadly to those represented in the collections of other Film Archives Forum members, though their national expression and meaning – as well as their scale – differentiate them from their regional counterparts. Needless to say, the list of broad categories below is not exhaustive, nor are those categories mutually exclusive.

Actuality - Most of the earliest films in the collection fall into this category which can itself be broken down into subdivisions such as street scenes, 'event films' and factory gate films.

Documentaries - As noted above, the cinema and non-theatrical documentary lies at the heart of the NFTVA collection, and this began to emerge more clearly from its roots in actuality during the first decade of the twentieth century. The 1930s saw the rise of the type of non-fiction film which may be said to fall under the Griersonian definition of 'Documentary'. Together, these two groups contribute to both the huge number of shorts and the smaller number of feature-length documentaries in the collection, with as many made by little-known professionals or by student or amateur film-makers as by those more famous or more central to the non-fiction industry.

Newsreels - The beginnings of the newsfilm lie in the early actualities which took singular events of national or local importance (Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (1897) and funeral (1901) being the most famous examples) as their subject matter. Britain's newsreel tradition proper, and its extension, the cine-magazine, are both well represented in the NFTVA collection. Though some major newsreel holdings are still owned and controlled by the producing companies' residual bodies or rights-holders, in many cases, the NFTVA undertakes preservation work on these materials and/or holds viewing copies for researcher access. In addition to these, important but relatively neglected examples of the form are held by the NFTVA. Notably it both preserves and owns rights to the Topical Budget newsreel (1911-1931), but also holds lesser-known but significant newsreels like British Screen News (1928-1932), as well as topical series such as This Modern Age (1946-1950) and Look At Life (1959-1969), both produced by the Rank organisation.

Travelogues - Film of domestic and foreign locations also has its roots in some of the Victorian and Edwardian actualities, and soon became a staple of the cinema programme. The 1920s saw travelogues being produced in huge numbers, often in series covering different parts of the British Isles, particularly London. Though fewer explicit travelogue series were made for the cinema after this time, one-off travel documentaries remained a popular subject – for 16mm colour production in particular – and this is reflected in the NFTVA collection. Highlights of the earlier non-fiction collections – and usually of more serious intent than general travelogues – are the ethnographic and exploration films. Frank Hurley's South (1919) is probably the most famous of many examples and has recently been fully restored by the NFTVA.

Amateur films - One of the more important factors illustrated by British moving image archive collections is that of the increasing availability of production technology to non-professionals, and the consequent democratisation of moving image production, alongside its subject-matter and range of viewpoints. Amateur film is therefore now recognised as being as important in the context of the national collection as it is in those of the regions, though it was, in fact, the regional archives which pioneered amateur film collecting, particularly that originating on small gauges (i.e., narrower than 16mm) on a systematic basis. Before the NFTVA began to follow the regional lead, most of the amateur material in the national collection had been acquired because it was associated with famous people like Amy Johnson or William Booth. However, the Archive's holdings of more everyday non-professional film have grown significantly in the last twenty years.

Educational films - Systematic production of film for use in the classroom and other educational contexts has a long vintage in British film-making, dating particularly from the 1920s, when British Instructional Films was one of the most prolific non-fiction producers of the decade, and thereafter. From the 1950s, most such material was produced on 16mm (now video) for direct distribution to schools, with much of it being made by companies or individual film-makers working exclusively in the educational sphere. The NFTVA's holdings also include specialist educational collections such the Inner London Education Authority 'classroom observation' video materials and films from the University of London Audio-Visual Centre. Overall, the NFTVA's educational films reflect changes in education theory and practice, particularly those of the latter part of the twentieth century. For instance, the non-didactic approach to health and sex education topics developed in the 'trigger' films of the 1970s contrasts significantly with that of films promoting 'social hygiene' in earlier decades.

Official films - This important category of film-making can be subdivided into at least four parts, public information, propaganda, research, and the 'evidential' film.

Public information films - these were produced for both the general public and specialised audiences, covering subjects like health and safety awareness, consumer rights and responsibilities, crime prevention, career opportunities, and services provided by government departments and agencies.

Propaganda - The morale-boosting Ministry of Information films from the Second World War are probably the best-known examples of official cinematic propaganda, and are also well represented in the Imperial War Museum collection.

Research - Government departments such as the Building Research Establishment, the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, and the Civil Aviation Authority regularly used moving image in research projects, recording the results of scientific tests and trials. Having generally been made for purely internal purposes, many of these films are subject to the 'Thirty Year Rule' and thus not accessible to the general public until thirty years after their production.

Evidence - with the results typically subject to the same restrictions as the research films above, a number of public record departments, most notably the Metropolitan Police, use moving image to capture evidence acceptable in legal proceedings.

Training Films - The ways in which the moving image has been used for training purposes throughout the twentieth century can be readily traced by examination of the NFTVA collection. Such material encompasses the in-house training films produced for particular companies and industries, as well as those intended for general use in the workplace or by the public, Not all in the latter category were commissioned by official bodies; for example, the films of Video Arts, produced from the 1970s onwards, are among the few which have received relatively wide attention. By far the greatest number of productions in this area have been made either on 16mm or, more recently, on video.

Political and Campaigning films - The use of the moving image to make political points has a long history. Conscious or unconscious political motivation can, of course, be discerned in a huge proportion of the non-fiction film preserved in the NFTVA, and government production, in particular, can always be analysed in a political context. However, moving image used for political, campaigning or 'oppositional' purposes can be classified as a genre in its own right. While including examples from all decades and of all political persuasions, the NFTVA's representation of this category is largely concentrated on two periods of intense activity – the 1930s, when avowedly Socialist organisations such as the Progressive Film Unit, Kino, and the Film and Photo League produced activist films dealing with the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, and social conditions generally, and the 1970s and 1980s, when numerous film collectives began making independent films, usually on 16mm. The output of organisations such as Cinema Action, the Berwick Street Collective, and Liberation Films was often explicitly motivated by political concerns, and sometimes by the desire to put film technology at the disposal of marginalised groups. Today, there are many 'video activists' using current and accessible technology to produce videos intended as campaigning tools, and the NFTVA is actively attempting to acquire examples.

Corporate and promotional films - Advertising is perhaps the most dubiously 'non-fictional' of all the non-fiction genres. A good proportion of current television advertising is captured via the NFTVA's off-air television recording activities, but numerous examples of cinema advertising, dating from the earliest days to the present, are also held. Many of these have been acquired from the agencies (such as J Walter Thompson) that produced them, while others have come direct from companies (such as Guinness or John Player) that have had long and distinctive advertising histories. There are also many longer films which use travelogue, documentary or other formats to promote the activities of commercial companies such as Unilever. Numerous non-commercial (and non-governmental) organisations have also produced or commissioned films and videos to promote their work. The NFTVA collection includes many examples from charity organisations such as Oxfam, Christian Aid and the NSPCC.

Key Film-makers

Any assessment of the NFTVA's non-fiction collection must take into account that a large proportion of the films included are likely to fall outside any artistic or cultural 'canon', and this understanding must equally be applied to consideration of the individuals and organisations that made them. Indeed, this is one of the collection's key characteristics and strengths. Nonetheless, all key figures are fully represented. Some of these are film-makers who, though more often regarded as makers of feature films, at one time or another directed documentaries – for instance, Anthony Asquith, the Boulting Brothers, Lindsay Anderson and Julien Temple. Others, however – Donald Taylor, Donald Alexander, or John Krish, to name but a few – are particularly associated with non-fiction.

Though much of the material shot in the early years no longer survives, the NFTVA collection does include examples of work by all key film-makers (some of whom also made story films) known to have been active in the production of actualities. These are individuals such as Birt Acres, R W Paul, James Bamforth, and Cecil Hepworth, and companies like the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company, the Sheffield Photo Company, the Urban Trading Company, and Gaumont. The recent rediscovery of the 800 original negatives in the Peter Worden Collection of Mitchell and Kenyon films, made at the beginning of the twentieth century, will result in a re-evaluation not only of the specific output of the Mitchell and Kenyon company, but also of the place of non-fiction in early film generally.

In later periods, the core of the NFTVA's non-fiction collection (or at least the body of work which has the highest profile outside the archival community) is the work of the British Documentary Movement and its offshoots. This work encompasses numerous individuals whom many today would consider among Britain's leading contributors to film as an art form, beginning with the Movement's founder, John Grierson (though after Drifters (1929), Grierson was actually more a producer, administrator and inspiration than a hands-on film-maker), and going on to include Edgar Anstey, Basil Wright, Arthur Elton, Stuart Legg, John Taylor, Paul Rotha, Humphrey Jennings and Grierson's sisters Marion and Ruby among many others.

However, any list of 'key film-makers' coming out of the Documentary Movement would as justifiably concentrate on organisations as on individuals, and, in any case, such an understanding of institutional context is necessary in order to truly understand the nature of these individuals' contributions. It is easy to justify the idea of the 'film unit' rather than that of the individual 'auteur' as being the key component of any history of British documentary, though these units can be divided into three distinct categories:

The Official and Public Sector Units - The best-known example is the Post Office's GPO Film Unit, led by Grierson in the 1930s, which itself grew out of the Empire Marketing Board and ultimately mutated into the Crown Film Unit. Important later examples are those relating to organisations which came into being as a result of the post-war nationalisation of the 1940s, such as British Transport Films and the National Coal Board film unit.

The Corporate Film Units - Somewhat equivalent to British Transport Films, but working within the private sector, these range from well-known examples – like the Shell Film Unit – which produced general interest documentaries as well as promotional, training and communications films specific to their parent companies, to lesser-known examples, (e.g., Millbank Films, ICI's in-house film unit), which concentrated on internal productions.

The Independent Film Units - These were film units not tied to particular state or commercial interests, and therefore available to work for a variety of sponsors or on self-generated projects. Strand and Realist are the key examples from the 1930s, and such well-known films as 'Housing Problems' (1935) emerged from this context. The NFTVA collection also holds numerous examples from the many lesser-known companies of this and the post-war decades.

Other individuals and organisations are associated with still less visible types of production. To take two random examples, there is Mary Field, who pioneered educational film-making at Gaumont-British Instructional and elsewhere, and Ralph Bond and his Atlas Film Company who made some of the first politically oppositional films in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

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