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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 17 April 2008

Pick of the Indies

NOW wouldn’t it be something to get your hands on the back catalogues and archives held by the British Film Institute?
The dusty storerooms on the South Bank have thousands of titles.
Coupled with a sofa and wide-screen telly, it could ruin your social life: after all, why go out when such fantastic films can come to you?
Well, thanks to Camden Town-based film company MovieMail, some of the BFI’s superb archived films are available to buy.
MovieMail have struck a deal with the BFI and rare
documentaries, usually only seen at specialist film festivals, can be ordered online.
Check out the RW Paul collection.
The Holborn film-maker ran a photographic studio in Camden at the turn of the 1900s and spent much of his time filming Camden Town in the
late-Victorian and early Edwardian period.
Other highlights include shows put together by the General Post Office film unit, which the government bankrolled to chronicle life during the mid-20th century.
Many films are the work of Humphrey Jennings, who shared a house in Gloucester Terrace with his family, and the journalist Alan Hutt.
In the 25-strong set of documentaries, a few stand out: At The Coal Face was Jennings’s chronicle of life below ground and unsentimentally shows our industrial past.
Our Country and The Dim Little Island tell of life on the Home Front, while Jennings’s last film before dying in a tragic climbing accident is a
documentary about the 1951 Festival of Britain.
All bring alive an era fast disappearing from living memory.
The company also have a comprehensive catalogue of world film. Releases this month include The Judge and the Assassin, the story of a former soldier who murders and rapes – and becomes the key to a career-mad judge’s political ambitions.

DAN CARRIER

• MovieMail, 5 Stucley Studios, Stucley Place, NW1 8NS. 0844 776 0900 www.moviemail-online.co.uk

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