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British newsreels
Newsreels were a regular feature of British cinema programmes between 1910 and 1979. For the first 20 years of their existence they were silent, with titles to introduce and describe each item, and accompanied by live music. They were usually issued twice-weekly.
The leading British newsreels of the silent period were Pathe Gazette, Gaumont Graphic and Topical Budget. The first British sound newsreel, British Movietone News, appeared in June 1929. By the mid-1930s the familiar newsreel style became established, with authoritative commentator and upbeat musical accompaniment.
The prominent reels were Movietone, Pathe Gazette (later Pathe News), Gaumont-British News, British Paramount News and Universal News. These were a familiar part of the cinema programme until the mid-1950s, when the emergence of daily television news began to render them obsolete. Most had folded by the end of the decade, but Pathe continued to 1970, and Movietone only closed in 1979. Today their film libraries live on, used in television programmes and increasingly available online.
More about the history of newsreels
British cinemagazines
The cinemagazine was a periodically-released film series shown in cinemas (and on television), in Britain and the Commonwealth, over the period 1910s-1980s.
It was closely allied to the newsreel, and some cinemagazines were produced by newsreel companies, but the form ranged widely. Some had a news or documentary function (This Modern Age), some were entertainment supplements to newsreels (Gaumont Mirror), some were sponsored by industrial concerns (Oil Review), some were issued by government bodies for national (Britain Can Make It) or international (This Week in Britain) consumption.
Cinemagazine is the common term for the genre, but they were also known as screen magazines or magazine films. Leading British producers of cinemagazines included Pathe, Rank, the National Coal Board, and particularly the Central Office of Information, which used the cinemagazine form in distributing films and programmes overseas that promoted the British way of life in the 1950s and 1960s. The cinemagazine began as part of the cinema programme, but its form lent itself naturally to television, and its legacy is the ubiquitous television magazine programme.
More about the history of Cinemagazines
Production Documents
Newsreel production documents help us to understand how a newsreel story was made: from the initial idea, through filming to the released cut. They reveal how much of what the cameraman shot actually ended up in the story, what elements were censored in wartime and changes made to the commentary in production.
These are the types of documents you'll find in the Production Documents section.
Assignment Sheets
Occasionally the news editor would give the cameraman a detailed description of what to film. They indicate how pre-planned the news could be, but they are comparatively rare among British newsreels.
Dope Sheets
Every cameraman had to fill out a form, or dope sheet, recording everything that he had filmed, usually describing it shot by shot. They would often add their own comments, revealing the day to day difficulties of filming the news and views on what they were shooting. In this sense they are eye witnesses of history.
Commentary Scripts
The commentator's script, often with hand-written additions and deletions. Commentaries are vital in the assessment of how each newsreel company interpreted its material. This in turn will help us decide the degree to which they informed or moulded opinion, obscured or misled or propagandised.
Shot Lists
These are shot-by-shot descriptions of the individual news story, with footage lengths for each shot, produced by the Editorial Department.
Souvenir Programmes and Ephemera
Cameramen would often pick up an assortment of publications to provide supporting information to the news story: newspaper clippings, sports programmes, exhibition programmes, promotional leaflets are just a few examples. These might inform how the cameraman filmed the story and would later help the editorial department identify names and places. A selection of specially cleared souvenir programmes can be found through the Souvenir Programme Map.
Issue Sheets (not published online)
Most of the metadata in the News on Screen database has been inputted from issue sheets, which recorded the details of each bi-weekly newsreel release. They listed the release date, overall issue number and each story title, often with a short synopsis. Some newsreel companies also included individual library numbers for stories, their length in feet of 35mm film, and the names of the cameramen.
Making newsreels for 70 years
Between 1910 and 1979 the newsreels, released twice a week in British cinemas, were a major news medium, and gave millions their picture of national and world events. The newsreels were shown in cinemas as part of the overall programme, which could include cartoons, trailers, advertisements, a second feature and the main feature film. There were also specialised newsreel theatres, often located in railway stations.
How the newsreels were made
The newsreels were produced on film (originally in black-and-white, then for their latter years in colour), and the rapid delivery, editing, processing and printing of large batches of newsfilm lay at the heart of the newsreels’ operation. The responsibility for the technical delivery of material lay with the production manager.
The content of the newsreel was determined by the editorial department. At the head of the operation was the editor or manager of the newsreel. The news editor had the responsibility of selecting stories for filming, instructing the cameramen on what to film, and overseeing the editing of the results. The commentator would deliver the spoken commentary, which was sometimes written by a separate commentary writer (in the silent era, titles were written, generally to the instructions of the news editor). The cameramen were responsible for filming the news story. In the sound era they would be accompanied by sound recordists, if live sound was required. If not, the story would be shot ‘silent’ and general sound effects would be added in the studio, alongside the commentary and recorded orchestral music which was such a distinctive feature of the newsreel release.
Search for people, companies and sponsors.
The cameramen
There were around five cameramen assigned to each of the newsreels in the silent era, rising to eight or nine cameramen and sound recordists in the sound era. These would be supplemented by freelancers. Most stories were covered by a single cameraman, while major state or sporting events would require a team of a dozen or more. A cameraman could expect to film a minimum of three stories per week, two of which might be used and the third retained in the library.
News editors were strict on the use of film. Cameramen had to be economical with footage, and they kept to strict rules about how a story was to be filmed. This saved on costs, but also led to a degree of formulaic style which contributed to the predictability of newsreels. The experience of one newsreel cameraman over a year is given in this document, which records every story filmed by Topical Budget’s John Hutchins over the period 1922-1923.
Collections
Our books and special collections are available for consultation by researchers from Learning on Screen members. Find out here if your institution is in BUFVC membership, or consider taking out membership of the BUFVC and taking advantage of a wide range of other special benefits.
Library
The Learning on Screen library holds most of the books published on British newsreels and cinemagazines, as well as many other titles relating to British film history and the use of film for historical research, including theses, papers and unpublished manuscripts.
British Movietone News documents
The BUFVC holds a complete set of commentary scripts (1929-1979) for the British Movietone newsreel. The Movietone collection also includes a complete copied set of the papers of the Newsreel Association of Great Britain and Ireland (the originals are held by the British Film Institute). Access to the collection is limited at present.
British Pathe newsreel documents
The BUFVC holds the entire surviving paper collection for the British Pathe newsreel and cinemagazine series, including Pathe Gazette, Pathe News and Pathe Pictorial. This includes issue sheets, commentary scripts, cameramen’s dope sheets and shot lists, as well as some business papers, and documents relating to individual film productions, footage used for television programmes, and films distributed by Pathe. Access to the collection is limited at present. There is a general inventory available.
David Samuelson papers
A major addition to the BUFVC’s newsreel documentation holdings is the papers of British Movietone News cameraman David Samuelson. These include a detailed record of his assignments with the newsreel 1947-1959, as well as other working papers and newsreel ephemera.
Margaret Leahy photograph album
Margaret Leahy was the winner of a competition organised in 1922 by the Daily Sketch newspaper and Topical Budget newsreel to find a ‘British film star’. Her prize was to star in a Hollywood feature, and her photograph album, donated to the BUFVC by her family, documents her time on set with Buster Keaton making the film THE THREE AGES (1923). An album of newspaper clippings is also held.
Norman Fisher collection
The late Norman Fisher was a cameraman with the British Movietone News newsreel between 1935 and 1979. The BUFVC holds his substantial photographic collection, including several albums relating to the newsreels, plus his diaries and other newsreel memorabilia.
Norman Roper collection
The late Norman Roper was a newsreel cameraman and editor, working with British Paramount News, Warwork News, Pathe News and British Movietone News. His newsreel effects have been passed on to the BUFVC, including photographs, news clippings, address books, posters and equipment.
Reg Sutton memoirs
Sound engineer Reg Sutton has generously donated a copy of his manuscript memoirs to the BUFVC. Sutton worked at the BBC from 1936, joining the British Movietone newsreel in 1946, leaving them in 1960 to join the Samuelson Film Service. The memoirs include a partial list of outside broadcasts recorded by Sutton in Newcastle 1939-1948. Sutton has also donated his assignments list for his time at Movietone.
Reuters Television newsreel documentation
In 1998 the BUFVC was offered a substantial collection of original documents, such as shot lists, dope sheets and commentary scripts, relating to the newsreels British Paramount News, Gaumont British News and Universal News. The majority of these have now been digitised and are available in downloadable form attached to their respective news stories on the British Universities Newsreel Database. The collection includes ephemera such as football programmes and publicity leaflets for events filmed by the newsreels. It also includes those documents not so far digitised, chiefly shot lists for unissued material.
Slade Film History Register
The Slade Film History Register was established by filmmaker Thorold Dickinson in 1969 at the Slade Film School, and aimed to create a register of documents relating to film that would be of value to historians. Central to the Register was the gathering of data relating to newsreels, in particular copies of newsreel issue sheets from the 1910s to the 1970s. The Register came into the care of the BUFVC in 1974 and formed the basis of the British Universities Newsreel Database. The Register also includes miscellaneous documents relating to history and film.
Film Archives
The guide below indicates which archives in the UK hold the newsreel and cinemagazine series listed on News on Screen, but it is not a guarantee that a particular item is held there.
Please check with these archives for further details.
AP Archive
Email: info@aparchive.com
Phone: +44 (0)20 7482 7482
Series held:
British Movietone Gazette
British Movietone News
BP Video Library
Email: bpvl@bp.com
Web: http://www.bpvideolibrary.com
Phone: 020 7928 2097
Fax: 020 7928 2101
Address:
c/o Metro
53 Great Suffolk Street
London SE1 0DB
Series held:
British Film Institute (BFI)
For BFI National Archive enquiries: nonfictioncurators@bfi.org.uk For commercial/footage reuse enquiries: footage.films@bfi.org.uk
Web: http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web
Phone: 020 7255 1444
Fax: 020 7580 7503
Address:
21 Stephen Street
London W1T 1LN
Notes:
The BFI National Archive also preserves the original nitrate film copies of British Movietone News, British Paramount News, Empire News Bulletin, Gaumont British News, Gaumont Graphic, Gaumont Sound News and Universal News (the World War II years are covered by the Imperial War Museum).
Series held:
Around The Town
Britain Can Make It
British Sporting Personalities
Calendar
Carrousel Britanico
Cinegazette
Colonial Cinemagazine
Commonwealth Review
Commonwealth Teleview
Daily Sketch Topical Budget
Dateline Britain
Eclair Journal
Eve And Everybody’s Film Review
Federal Spotlight
Fordson Newsreel
Frontier
Frontier (Colour series)
Gaumont Mirror
Gaumont Sound Mirror
Gaumont Sound News
Home and Away
Ideal Cinemagazine
Ideal Sound Cinemagazine
Ingot Pictorial
Laing News Review
Living Tomorrow
London Line
London Line (Colour series 1)
London Line (Colour series 2)
Look At Life
Looking At Britain
Mining Review 1st Year
Moslems In Britain
Oil Review
Our Club Magazine
Our Magazine
Panorama
Parade
Pathe Monthly
Pictorial News (Official) / War Office Official Topical Budget
Pictorial News / Topical Budget
Pictorial News / War Office Official Topical Budget
Point of View
Portrait
Review 26th Year
Rhodesian Spotlight
Roundabout
Scrapbook
Shell Cinemagazine
The Enthusiasts
The March of Time 1st Year
The Pacemakers
This Is Britain
This Modern Age
This Week In Britain
Tomorrow Today
Topic
Topical Budget
Topical Budget / War Office Official Topical Budget
Transatlantic Teleview
Unilever Magazine
Viewpoint
War Office Official Topical Budget
War Office Official Topical Budget and Pictorial News
Whirlpool of War
Workers’ Topical News
British Pathe Ltd
Email: info@britishpathe.com
Web: http://www.britishpathe.com
Phone: 0207 665 8340
Address:
The Media Centre
3 - 8 Carburton Street
London
W1W 5AJ
Notes:
Pathe now also handles the Reuters Historical Collection, which includes the British Paramount, Empire British, Gaumont Graphic and Gaumont British newsreels.
Series held:
Astra Gazette
Colour Pictorial
Eve And Everybody’s Film Review
New Pictorial
New Series Pictorial
New Series Pictorial ‘A’
Pathe Gazette
Pathe Gazette / Pathe Super
Pathe News
Pathe Pictorial
Pathe Sound Pictorial
Pathe Super Gazette
Pathe Super Silent Gazette
Pathe Super Sound Gazette
Pathetone Weekly
Pictorial
Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive
Email: film@iwm.org.uk
Web: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/film
Phone: 020 7416 5291
Fax: 020 7416 5379
Address:
Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
Notes:
The IWM also preserves the original nitrate film copies for the World War II period of British Paramount News, Gaumont British News and Universal News.
Series held
Airfront Gen Operational Supplement
Airfront RAF Operational Film Record
Pictorial News (Official) / War Office Official Topical Budget
Pictorial News / War Office Official Topical Budget
The Gen
Topical Budget / War Office Official Topical Budget
War Office Official Topical Budget
War Office Official Topical Budget and Pictorial News
War Pictorial News
Warwork News
Worker and Warfront
World Pictorial News
London’s Transport Museum
Email: simon.murphy@ltmuseum.co.uk
Web: http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk
Phone: 020 7379 6344
Fax: 020 7565 7254
Address:
39 Wellington Street
Covent Garden
London WC2E 7BB
Series held:
National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive (formerly the Scottish Screen Archive)
Email: movingimage@nls.uk
Web: https://www.nls.uk/collections/moving-image-archive
Phone: 0845 366 4600
Fax: 0845 366 4601
Address:
Kelvin Hall
1445 Argyle Street
Glasgow
G3 8AW
Notes:
The IWM and NFTVA also hold copies of some items
Series held:
British Moving Picture News
Scottish Moving Picture News
North West Film Archive
Email: nw.filmarchive@mmu.ac.uk
Web: http://www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk
Phone: 0161 247 3097
Fax: 0161 247 3098
Address:
The Manchester Metropolitan University
Minshull House
47-49 Chorlton Street
Manchester M1 3EU
Series held:
Reuters Archive Licensing: Screen Ocean
Email: info@screenocean.com
Web: http://reuters.screenocean.com/
Phone: +44(0)1954 262052
Address:
124 Horseferry Road,
London
SW1P 2TX
Notes:
British Pathe Ltd (qv) also handles the Reuters Historical Collection, which includes the British Paramount, Empire British, Gaumont Graphic and Gaumont British newsreels.
Series held:
British Paramount News
Empire News Bulletin
Gaumont British News
Gaumont Graphic
Gaumont Sound News
Look At Life
Universal Irish News
Universal News
Universal Talking News
Shell Film and Video Unit
Email: jane.paynor@shell.com
Web: http://www.shell.com
Phone: 020 7934 3318
Fax: 020 7934 4918
Address:
Video Media Services
Shell Centre
London SE1 7NA
Series held:
Web Directory
Disclaimer: Learning on Screen is not responsible for the content on external websites.
The Alger Hiss Story
Alger Hiss was a US State Department official convicted in 1950 of perjury following accusations by Whittaker Chambers that he was a secret communist. The site brings together the historical background, the arguments and evidence in favour of and against Hiss and includes video clips of American newsreel coverage of the story.
Archivio Storico
Information on 12,000 editions from various newsreels produced by Luce and others in Italy 1928-1990, as well as several thousand documentaries. Also includes foreign newsreels made in Germany (some by UFA) as well as 150 hours of material made by the American War Office between 1943 and 1945. Shot lists and running times are provided for all the items, and several hundred hours of video clips.
BBC Nation on Film
This archive of historical film clips, hosted by the BBC with the Open University, includes extracts from the ICI cinemagazine Just Billingham in its Chemical Industry section.
BBC: On This Day
Video and audio from the huge BBC news archive from 1950 onwards, including Television Newsreel material, made available through RealPlayer, with plenty of textual support. The entire database can be searched by month and day and by theme and there is also a section devoted to witness accounts.
BECTU History Project
The BECTU History Project records interviews with members of the film and television industry, including several who worked with the newsreels. Master tapes are preserved in the BFI National Archive with access copies held in the BFI National Library.
Beyond Pathe
Beyond Pathe is a privileged acces site brings the British Pathe Newsreel archive to schools in the UK. It is a pilot project, concentrating on the Second World War, whose aim is to enable schools within the West Midlands to utilise the Pathe archive, which are free to use in educational establishments.
BFI InView
600 hours of material from the BFI National Archive and partner organisations, including The National Archives, focusing on how key social, political and economic issues have been represented through moving images. Many examples of cinemagazines produced by the Central Office of Information are available, such as This Week in Britain and The Pacemakers. This resource is only available to UK FE/HE users.
British Film Institute Reuben Library
The BFI library contains a wide range of books and journals relating to the newsreels. The catalogue is accessible online.
BFI Special Collections
The BFI Special Collections department holds unpublished materials including the papers of the Newsreel Association, the private papers of Yvonne Fletcher, Peter Hampton, Stanley Mumford and Patrick Wyand, and the surviving papers of the Topical Film Company (producers of Topical Budget).
British Movietonews
Online database for the entirety of British Movietone News (1929-1979), with detailed descriptions and streamed video for all news stories via QuickTime. Requires (free) registration.
British Pathe
Up to 3,500 hours of streamed material is available, covering the whole of the Pathe newsreel and cinemagazine film library. Series available include Pathe News, Pathe Pictorial and Eve's Film Review.
British Universities Film & Video Council
The BUFVC, which hosts this website, is a major source of newsreel and cinemagazine information, with books, artefacts, manuscripts and production documents, including the entire British Pathe paper archive. Information on newsreels can also be found through its Moving Image Gateway and Researcher's Guide to Screen Heritage databases.
Film Australia Digital Learning
A stylish and informative educational resource on Australian life, with free video clips. It include well-contextualised materials and clips of Australian newsreels from the silent and sound eras.
Gaumont Pathe Archives
The combined archives of the Gaumont, Eclair and French Pathe news archives, with news material going back to 1896. There is a substantial number of streamed video copies of Gaumont newsreels, making this site one of the leading sources of online historical news footage in the world. The catalogue is available in French and English.
Harappa
Explores the heritage of the Indus Valley civilization, and 20th century India and Pakistan through text, drawings, photographs and film. Features video clips from newsreels covering Independence in a 'Wall of Movies' feature, and March of Time outtakes from the same period.
Imperial War Museum
The Film & Video section of the Museum's Collections Online database includes catalogue data for Topical Budget (1914-1918), Warwork News, War Pictorial News, The Gen, Worker and Warfront, and Welt im Film, the Anglo-American newsreel produced for screening in occupied Germany after the war.
Imperial War Museum Sound Archive
Includes sound recordings of British service and newsreel cameramen who worked during the Second World War.
International Association for Media and History
Organisation made up film and television broadcasters, researchers and scholars interested in the media of film, television and radio and their relations to history. Its website provides a forum for those interested in this field, with information on conferences, publications, and members' research activities.
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive has around 600 examples of the American Universal Newsreel, which ran 1929-1967. The newsreel is in the public domain in America, and the newsreels are free to download in MPEG1, MPEG2 and MPEG4 formats.
ITN Source
ITN Source (formerly ITN Archive) holds ITN's television news broadcasts from 1955, and the Reuters Television library of British cinema newsreel material (Gaumont-British News, Gaumont Graphic, British Paramount News, Universal News and others).
The March Toward War
A website produced by the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia which contains items from the March of Time, available in the Timeline section.
Mass-Observation Archive
Mass-Observation was a social research organisation founded in 1937. Its archive is held in the University of Sussex, and in the section 'Films 1936-50' there are extensive reports on audience responses to British newsreels during World War Two. All of the File Reports on newsreels are available in the Learn More section of News on Screen.
Movietone News Dope Sheets: The War Years
The University of South Carolina Newsfilm Library, in collaboration with the Library of Congress, have digitised over 2,000 Fox Movietone News dope sheets from December 1941 to 1945. This is just a small sample of the 30,000 dope sheets that were filed by the company and can be searched by country, date and description.
The National Archives
The National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office) holds records and production files relating to government cinemagazine and newsreel production, including the Central Office of Information and the films from the nationalised industries such as Mining Review. Details are available through its online Catalogue. Viewable cinemagazine content is included in its online Public Information Films section.
Newsfilm Library
The University of South Carolina holds a portion of the American Fox Movietonews cinema newsreel (and examples of the silent Fox News). The collection covers the periods 1919-1934 and 1942-1944. There is an online catalogue, still images from the collection and a small number of video clips available.
Newsfilm Online
3000 hours of footage from ITN Source is now available for download including all their Gaumont newsreel material, Gaumont Graphic and Gaumont British News, together with a selection of British Paramount News. This resource is only available to FE/HE users in the UK.
Newsplayer
Newsfilms from 1896 to the twenty-first century (from French Pathe and ITN Archive) available on subscription. Free preview section.
Newseum
Web version of the American museum based in Virginia which offers an interactive look at the news through features on the Berlin Wall, War and news stories of the twentieth-century, among other subjects.
Open Images
Over 1000 hours of material produced by the Dutch newsreel company Polygoon-Profilti are available for download from the Open Images site under a Creative Commons - Share Alike license.
Reel History
A selection of newsreels and other short films from Swedish Television (SVT) and the Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images (SLBA), divided into themes, and based on a database of Swedish newsreels and short films (not available).
ProQuest Learning: History
Pathe newsreel clips on such themes as British Empire; Black Americans; The Irish Question; Conflict and Cold War; The First World War etc. designed for Secondary Education. Free trial or annual subscription.
Scottish Screen Archive
Clips of cinemagazines such as Home and Away and City Sidelights can be viewed on the website along with over a thousand clips from the Scottish Screen Archive collection.
Screenonline
A guide to British film and television history, with several hundred hours of streamed video accessible only to UK schools, colleges and libraries. The video includes newsreel and cinemagazine material, including Topical Budget, Britain Can Make It, Cinegazette, Mining Review and Worker and Warfront.
Shapes of Time
Support website for the Regional Broadband Consortium/British Pathe Schools Licence. Contains a large number of links, resources and ideas for using newsreel content in education.
Terence Gallacher's Recollections Of A Career In Film
Terry Gallacher's long career as included periods at British Movietone, United Press International Television News (UPITN) as well as director of his company. Through this ever-expanding site Terry is re-telling his unique story through text and audio. Although the articles span his whole career, the podcasts focus purely on his time at British Movietone
UCLA Film and Television Archive
American film archive which holds Hearst Metrotone News. Its holdings are traceable through the MELVYL Catalog.
Wochenschau-Archiv
The Federal Film Archives, Berlin, are digitising the Deutsche Wocheschau newsreel collection of German newsreels from 1949 and making them freely available over the internet. Over 4,000 stories have been issued so far, for lowband (56K) or broadband (250K) connections, using Windows Media Player. In English and German.
WPA Film Library
American stockshot library which includes the British Pathe newsreel database.
WSLS-TV (Roanoke, VA) Newsfilm Collection
WSLS-TV of Roanoke, Virginia, USA. donated this collection which spans 1951 to 1971 to the University of Virginia. It comprises approximately 13,000 clips of 16mm film shown during news programmes and roughly 18,000 pages of the accompanying scripts read on air by anchorpersons.
Abstracts
This is a bibliographic guide to British newsreels and cinemagazines. The abstracts were originally published in the three volumes of the BUFVC ‘s Researcher’s Guide to British Newsreels (1983, 1988, 1993), with coverage now extended to the present day. The aim of these abstracts is to illustrate the genesis, development and eventual demise of the British newsreels and cinemagazines, while also documenting their continued use as a subject for academic study.
Available on request - contact ask@bufvc.ac.uk
Books
This is a collection of some of key books and articles on British newsreels and cinemagazines.
Books
Aldgate, Anthony, Cinema and History: British Newsreels and the Spanish Civil War (London: Scolar Press, 1979) Detailed account of the workings of the British newsreels in the 1930s, in particular covering the Spanish Civil War, asking questions about objectivity, bias and the forming of public opinion.
Ballantyne, James (ed.), Researcher's Guide to British Newsreels (London: British Universities Film & Video Council, 1983) A guide to resources on British newsreels, with abstracts of articles and books, and lists of newsreel staff, libraries and organisations.
Ballantyne, James (ed.), Researcher's Guide to British Newsreels Volume II (London: British Universities Film & Video Council, 1988) A further guide to British newsreel sources, with updated information from the first volume, comments on newsreel staff records, more abstracts, and further information on newsreel information sources.
Ballantyne, James (ed.), Researcher's Guide to British Newsreels Volume III (London: British Universities Film & Video Council, 1993) Third volume in series, with more abstracts, articles by Ray Densham, Nicholas Hiley, Luke McKernan and John Turner, further comments on newsreel staff and other supplementary information.
British Newsreel Issue Sheets 1913-1970: the complete collection held by the Slade Film History Register reproduced on microfiche (London: Graphic Data Publishing/British Universities Film & Video Council, 1984) An edition of 275 fiche reproducing all of the issue sheets for newsreels and cinemagazines in the Slade Film History Register.
Chambers, Ciara, Ireland in the Newsreels (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012) The first comprehensive account of newsreel coverage of Ireland arguing that the newsreels reflected the development a 'partitionist' mentality for audiences in the north and south of the country
Crosby, Emily and Linda Kaye (eds.), Projecting Britain: The Guide to British Cinemagazines (London: British Universities Film & Video Council, 2008) The first comprehensive guide to the cinemagazine including a directory of 130 series, six articles, original texts and a resources section.
Fielding, Raymond, The American Newsreel 1911-1971 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972) The standard history of the American newsreel, with some useful points about newsreels in general, including a general account of British newsreel production.
Fielding, Raymond, The March of Time, 1935-1951 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) A history of the American news cinemagazine The March of Time, which ran a British edition. Includes details of general newsreel production as well.
Hammerton, Jenny, For Ladies Only? Eve's Film Review: Pathe Cinemagazine 1921-1933 (Hastings: The Projection Box, 2001) A lively history and analysis of the cinemagazine for women, Eve's Film Review, produced by Pathe 1921-1933.
Jeavons, Clyde, Jane Mercer and Daniela Kirchner (eds.), The Story of the Century!: An International Newsfilm Conference (London: British Universities Film & Video Council, 1998) The proceedings of a wide-ranging conference on newsreels and newsfilm, their history, significance, present use and archiving, held at the National Film Theatre in London in 1996.
Low, Rachael, Films of Comment and Persuasion of the 1930s (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979) Contains a detailed and informative (if somewhat negative) chapter on newsreel ownership, production and style during the 1930s.
McGlade, Fred, A History of the British Army Film & Photographic Unit in the Second World War (Helion & Company, 2011) A history of the AFPU based on memoirs, personal letters and interviews with AFPU cameramen
McKernan, Luke, Topical Budget: The Great British News Film (London: British Film Institute, 1992) A history of the 1911-1931 British newsreel Topical Budget, which was controlled by the War Office during the First World War.
McKernan, Luke (ed.), Yesterday’s News: The British Cinema Newsreel Reader (London: BUFVC, 2002) A collection of over forty essays past and present on the British newsreels. Authors include Anthony Aldgate, Graham Greene, C.A. Lejeune, Philip Norman, J.B. Priestley and Nicholas Pronay.
Mitchell, Leslie, Leslie Mitchell Reporting... (London: Hutchinson, 1981) Autobiography of the BBC television and radio announcer and commentator for British Movietone News.
Noble, Ronnie, Shoot First! Assignments of a Newsreel Cameraman (London: George G. Harrap, 1955) Thoughtful autobiography from Universal News and Television Newsreel cameraman Ronnie Noble, including his filming of World War II and the Korean War.
Pronay, Nicholas and D.W. Spring (eds.), Propaganda, Politics and Film, 1918-1945 (London: Macmillan, 1982) Collection of essays predominantly on British political and propagandist films 1918-1945, with numerous references to the newsreels.
Reeves, Nicholas, Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War (London: Croom Helm, 1986) Includes an account of the War Office Official Topical Budget, the British propaganda newsreel operated by the War Office and the Ministry of Information 1917-1918.
Richards, Jeffrey and Dorothy Sheridan (eds). Mass-Observation at the Movies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987) Includes a section on the Mass-Observation reports on newsreels and their reception in Britain during the Second World War, with a selection of texts from the original documents and an interview with cameraman Ken Gordon.
Russell, Patrick and James Piers Taylor (eds). Mass-Observation at the Movies (London: Palgrave Macmilla, 2010)
Collection of essays on the British documentary movement
Short, K.R.M. and Stephan Dolezel (eds.), Hitler's Fall: The Newsreel Witness (London: Croom Helm, 1988) Comparative study of the newsreel record of the final days of the Third Reich, from British, German, Soviet, American, Polish and Swiss perspectives.
Smales, Nigel, When You're A Smiler (Words by Design, 2012) An engaging biography of the cameraman Eddie 'Smiler' Smales by his son. He was one of the earliest recruits to the British Army Film and Photographic Unit, covering the conflict at Alamein and later in Europe.
Smith, Paul (ed.), The Historian and Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) A collection of essays considering different aspects of the use of film as historical evidence, with numerous references to newsreels, including Nicholas Pronay's essay, 'The newsreels: the illusion of actuality'.
Smither, Roger and Wolfgang Klaue (eds.), Newsreels in Film Archives: A Survey Based on the FIAF Newsreel Symposium (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1996) Proceedings of a symposium on the history and preservation of newsreels held by the International Federation of Film Archives.
Turner, John, Filming History: The Memoirs of John Turner, Newsreel Cameraman (London: British Universities Film & Video Council, 2001) Detailed memoirs of John Turner, who was a Gaumont-British News cameraman in the 1930s-1950s, including serving as the royal rota cameraman, and news editor for Pathe News in the 1960s.
Wyand, Paul, Useless if Delayed (London: George G. Harrap, 1959) Very entertaining and informative autobiography by British Movietone News cameraman Paul Wyand.
Articles
Borsay, Anne. 2012. ‘“Fit to Work”: The Talygarn Rehabilitation Centre’. Llafur 11 (2): 154–56. Informative discussion of this story which formed part of issue 14 of the wartime cinemagazine Worker and Warfront. Soffer, Oren, and Tamar Liebes. ‘Good News: The Carmel Newsreels and Their Place in the Emerging Israeli Language Media’. Israel Affairs 21, no. 1 (2015): 98–111. http://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2014.984422