GPO Film Unit

Shows the workings of Britain's Air Post service.

Shows the production of the London telephone directory.

Rainbow Dance is a 1936 British animated film released by the GPO Film Unit. This is Lye's second film. It uses the Gasparcolor process.

A concert short spotlighting Dame Myra Hess performing the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, “Appassionata.” Filmed in an intimate hall setting, it focuses on her touch and phrasing, presenting the movement as a self-contained showcase of her artistry.

As the subtitle of the film suggests - The Story of a Post Card from Manchester to Graffham - this journey is very much focused on the process of sorting, transporting and delivering the postcard in question.

This expository film shows the mood of European society on the eve of the Second World War while promoting the values of international cooperation. Using the Swiss office of the BBC as an example, the film describes the functioning of radio and presents the possibilities opened by mass communications. After the advent of sound film, Cavalcanti promoted experimentation with sound, and in this connection he was interested in the communicational, organizational, and social aspects of radio.

A behind-the-scenes GPO Film Unit documentary (directed by Stuart Legg) that races from studio rehearsals and newsrooms to control rooms and transmitters, weaving speeches, music, and outside broadcasts—featuring voices like H. G. Wells and Ramsay MacDonald—into a kinetic portrait of how the BBC’s national “voice” is made.

A brisk GPO Film Unit promo for the Post Office Savings Bank: pub talk and daydream vignettes tout penny-by-penny thrift, peaking in a playful Norman McLaren passage where household furniture springs to life—selling the idea that “many a little makes a lot.”

“The preparations made by the GPO to enable the press and the BBC to cover a major sporting event, in this instance, the Manx T.T. motor-cycle races.” - BFI.

The picture shows the industrialization of England, and the measures taken to clean up afterwards: a lyrical counterpart of Men In Danger, and a contradiction.

Animation featuring dancing black and white shadows.

Experimental animation produced by GPO to explain telephone systems to the public.

Short documentary showing the workings of a large London sorting office.

Shot in mid-1939 as S.S. Ionian (also shown as Her Last Trip), Humphrey Jennings’s GPO short follows the Royal Mail steamer on a last peacetime run through the Mediterranean—Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Haifa—under the gaze of the Mediterranean Fleet (HMS Barham, Malaya, Warspite). After the Ionian was sunk by a German mine on 29 November 1939 en route from Crete to Hull, the film was recut and released as Cargoes.

Combining a whimsical romantic tale, practical information about the Post Office Savings Bank, and a gently experimental film-making technique, this film entertainingly depicts some of the prospects opened up by having a savings account.

Correspondence between young lovers nearly ends in disaster through a mistake in postal district. Fortunately the GPO spots the error and all ends well, but with the moral that correspondents should get the address right.

“Catching up with gossip, inspecting new ducklings, clambering over gates, walking across meadows - the life of a postman appears idyllic, but this Devon postie has some startling ideas about improving efficiency... The inimitable Richard Massingham, a doctor turned actor and filmmaker, co-directed this film, and appears in it as the testy Mr Proctor. This film was produced by John Grierson, often hailed as the father of British documentary. It was made for the General Post Office (GPO) Film Unit, one of the most remarkable creative institutions that Britain has produced. It provided a springboard for many of the best-known and critically acclaimed figures in the British Documentary Movement.” - BFI

Silhouette film advertising the Post Office Greetings Telegram service.

Police work during World War II in Britain.

Wartime morale-boosting propaganda short, looking at the greatness of Britain and the efforts of all to preserve her power and integrity.