GPO Film Unit

Shows the workings of Britain's Air Post service.

Humphrey Jennings’s wartime short rallies Britain’s countryside, showing fields ploughed up from fallow, seed sown, and crops raised on once-idle land as part of the national push to feed the home front—an urgent, lyrical call to turn soil into sustenance.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

This documentary short examines the special train on which mail is sorted, dropped and collected on the run, and delivered in Scotland on the overnight run from Euston, London to Glasgow.

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.

A tribute to the courage and resiliency of Britons during the darkest days of the London Blitz.

Shows the production of the London telephone directory.

“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.

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.

Short GPO documentary, about mail that is sent out of the country to Switzerland.

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.

The film, made to advertise domestic telephone sets, is based around two very different families. The Petts are conventional, happy and have children; the Potts are unconventional and unhappy, without children.

Ambitious documentary chronicling the cultural life and religious customs of the Sinhalese and the effects of advanced industrialism on such customs.

Trade Tattoo went even further than Rainbow Dance in its manipulation of the Gasparcolor process. The original black and white footage consisted of outtakes from GPO Film Unit documentaries such as Night Mail. Lye transformed this footage in what has been described as the most intricate job of film printing and color grading ever attempted. Animated words and patterns combine with the live-action footage to create images as complex and multi-layered as a Cubist painting. Music was provided by the Cuban Lecuona Band. With its dynamic rhythms, the film seeks (in Lye’s words) to convey “a romanticism about the work of the everyday in all walks of life."

How long-distance telephone calls are made, from the UK to the USA. We see operators, miles of wires, and the amplification of voice transmitted across the waters. Engineers of the Post Office describe how they are improving the service.

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

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