Description

The Camera is Ours: Britain’s Women Documentary Makers (DVD)
Various directors

Most leading documentarians in Britain today are women. The Camera is Ours tells the story of some of the key female pioneers of the British documentary movement beginning in the 1930 and culminating in the late sixties. It’s a story that is beautifully captured in the collections held by the BFI National Archive, now available to audiences via this new collection.
This two-disc set features a selection of films made between 1935 and 1967, newly remastered in partnership with The Film Foundation and featuring trailblazing directors including Marion Grierson, Ruby Grierson, Jill Craigie, Evelyn Spice, Sarah Erulkar, Margaret Thomson and Kay Mander.

The Films

• Beside the Seaside (Marion Grierson, 1935, 21 mins)
• Behind the Scenes (Evelyn Spice, 1938, 16 mins)
• They Also Serve (Ruby Grierson, 1940, 10 mins)
• 4 and 20 Fit Girls (Mary Field, 1940, 11 mins)
• The English Inn (Muriel Box, 1941, 10 mins)
• Birth-day (Brigid ‘Budge’ Cooper,1945, 21 mins)
• Homes for the People (Kay Mander, 1945, 22 mins)
• Children of the Ruins (Jill Craigie, 1948, 10 mins)
• The Troubled Mind (Margaret Thomson, 1954, 21 mins)
• Something Nice to Eat (Sarah Erulkar, 1967, 20 mins)

Special features

• Independent Miss Craigie (Lizzie Thynne, 2020, 92 mins): drawing on her fascinating archive, this biopic uncovers the director’s energetic struggles to get her radical films made. Working outside the British Documentary Movement in the 1940s and early 50s, Jill Craigie tackled new subjects for the cinema such as equal pay for women in To Be Woman(1951), and modern art in Out of Chaos (1944), featuring Henry Moore and Paul Nash. A dual narration by the older and younger Craigie (Hayley Atwell), evokes her unique blend of polemic, drama and often humour
• Kay Mander(2022, 5 mins): an intimate and affecting portrait of Kay Mander at her home in Dumfries, Scotland, shot by filmmaker Barney Snow in 2000
• Sarah Erulkar Q&A (2010, 7 mins)
• Illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Ros Cranston Penny Woolcock, Molly Dineen, Lilian Crawford, Reba Martin, Carol Morley, Patrick Russell, Jeanie Finlay, Lizzie Thynne, Katy McGahan, Girish Shambu and Barney Snow

 

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