1947: the British year of filmstrips

1947 is a pivotal year in the history and evolution of the filmstrip in Britain; a year in which the filmstrip takes its place at the centre of British visual education and defines postwar British politics and society. So how did this come to be?

The filmstrip was first introduced to Britain around the time of the First World War, with the lantern-slide manufactures Newton and Co. being of the chief producers of both filmstrips (calling them film-slides at the time) and filmstrip projectors. However, the medium was only widely adopted for instruction during Second World War (early 1940s). In many respects, Britain was late to the party as the filmstrip was already a well-established instructional technology other parts of Europe (including in Nazi Germany) and North America. Indeed, the initial application of the filmstrip in Britain owed much to America. In 1947, Robert King, an instructor for the British Admiralty, discussed how the US Army had highlighted the benefits of the still-image technology to British officers. Filmstrips were less expensive than film, more portable than the magic lantern, and could easily be accompanied by spoken or recorded commentary – this made them an extremely effective instrument for training and propaganda. By the end of the War, the Admiralty had made “several hundred” strips of its own.[i]  King, however, accurately predicted that the filmstrip was “a thing of the future rather than the past,” and that it would significantly shape ordinary life.[ii] Filmstrips on civics, history, science, and practical skills became essential in re-introducing a war-torn citizenry to ordinary life.

While set up in late-1946, the British Ministry of Education’s National Committee for Visual Aids in Education (NCVAE) and the National Committee for Preparation and Production of Visual Aids (NCPPVA) began to develop visual materials for school, technical, and industrial education in 1947. The committees regularly commissioned filmstrips, both on their own and as part of “visual units” that combined different media – filmstrips, films, wall-charts, maps, diagrams, textbook illustrations – to illustrate specific lessons.[iii] The committees were driven by some immediate practical considerations. Under the Butler Act of 1944, the school leaving age was raised from 14 to 15, and visual aids could now help reach and teach the increased student numbers.

The stress on visual aids was equally motivated by a desire to promote British ideals and interests at a time when Britain’s economic and political influence had diminished. As the British Empire transitioned to The Commonwealth visual aids offered Britain a method to export British values and retain an indirect influence over (former) colonies, and British visual education was presented as “helping” the world. In January 1947, championing the use of British visual aids, the magazine Instructional Screen (later retitled Look and Listen) described Britain as a “university among nations, teaching them how to live” and “continuing to make sacrifices in token and in kind for the peace it did so much to secure.”[iv] Fundamentally, Instructional Screen re-packaged claims of British (and Western) civilizational superiority as a matter of pedagogical benevolence. The British government also collaborated with organisations such as the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), to produce and internationally distribute films, filmstrips, and literature that were ostensibly for the promotion of global literacy and diplomacy but were underpinned by an imperial ethos.[v]

The British filmstrip was particularly projected as an essential aid here. In May 1947, Robert T. Lewis, the director of the Daily Mail School Aid Department, argued that the “British film strip is infinitely better [to the American one]. Generally there is no caption, the information [about the images] is given in the teacher’s book. The teacher is not eliminated.”[vi] In working with rather than against the classroom teacher, the British filmstrip could influence what was considered knowledge across the world. Lewis not only identifies a distinctly British filmstrip – one that had stepped out of the shadow of its American forefather – but also emphasises its potential to act as a form of geo-political soft power, an inexpensive one at that.

Cognizant of the educational and political potential of the filmstrip, the British state primarily defined the technology as instructional. In July 1946, Parliament exempted the filmstrip and the filmstrip projector from any entertainment tax, even as the 16mm film projector remained taxed.[vii] Further, in May 1947, the Ministry of Education invited John Curthoys – the managing director of British Industrial Films and General Editor of Unicorn Head Filmstrips, and who also made films for the ruling Labour party – to represent the filmstrip industry as part of their recently formed visual education committees.[viii] Subsequently (1950—1951), Unicorn produced a series of filmstrips on science, geography, and practical skills for the National Committee for Visual Aids in Education. At the same time, various other organs of the British government – the Colonial Office, the Central Office of Information, the Commonwealth Office, the Home Office, the Civil Defence Department, and the National Parks Commission to name a few – recognised the value and reach of the filmstrip, and began to produce their own for colonial, civic, scientific, and public education that were circulated across the world (1948—1964).

It was not just the British government, though; 1947 also marks the year that non-State actors invested in the filmstrip. The illustrator and animator Marian Ray began her independent scientific filmstrips venture in 1947 and continued to run her business till the early 1980s. Ray successfully sold her filmstrips not only in Britain but across the world but she also was not the only one; the cheapness of filmstrip production meant that many independent artists and instructors could produce teaching material and contribute to national and international education. In 1947, religious organisations such as the United Council for Missionary Education and the Church of Scotland also setup up their visual aid committees, and both institutions placed a strong emphasis on filmstrips both for British and colonial education. Also in 1947, Common Ground, which has largest British filmstrip producer, lobbied the British Publishers’ Association to recognise the value of filmstrips as an educational publication. Similarly, by 1947, the Daily Mail School Aid Department, had fully established networks of educational filmstrip production and distribution in Britain and beyond. As Tom Rice argues, “through its educational media, the Daily Mail positioned itself as a quasi-British counterpart to UNESCO.”[ix] Indeed, these individuals, organisations, and corporations all recognised an opportunity to establish relationships with British and global educators, and in doing so, perhaps extend their own form of soft power.

It was also around this period that educational journals advocated for the filmstrip as an instructional medium. In February 1947, Look and Listen started publishing reviews of filmstrips. By the end of the year (in November 1947), the non-theatrical cinema magazine 16-mil Film User changed its name to Film User, explaining that “we now begin to devote space to that comparative new-comer, that important junior partner: the filmstrip.”[x] By the second half of 1947 not only Look and Listen and Film User, but other educational media journals – e.g. Sight and Sound and The Monthly Filmstrip Review – routinely offered reviews and perspectives on filmstrips. The opinions printed were by teachers, technicians, schools, and educational societies, illustrating the heightened interest in the filmstrip within the educational milieu. The attention to filmstrips as a teaching aid only grew, and in 1950 the NCVAE launched its own journal, Visual Education, providing a further platform to encourage filmstrip production and use.

1947 is when the pedagogic potential of the filmstrip became publicly visible. Today filmstrips are all but forgotten, however, the medium’s historical trajectory reveals how affordable and accessible visual media helped reimagine and reposition Britain in a postwar world.

References:
[i] Robert King, ‘Production and Presentation of Filmstrips’, Photographic Journal, November 1947, 246-249. Also see “The Magic Lantern Grows Up” Picture Post, 19 June 1948, 20-23
[ii] Ibid, 246.
[iii] As an example, see Local Studies: Ministry of Education Pamphlet No.10 (Ministry of Education, 1948). The pamphlet discusses the Local Studies visual unit that encouraged the study of local history among children as way of comprehending industrial, political, and economic histories.
[iv] Look and Listen, January 1947, 1.
[v] Zoë Druick, “UNESCO, Film and Education: Mediating Postwar Paradigms of Communication,” in Useful Cinema ed. Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson (Duke University Press, 2011), 81-102..
[vi] Robert T. Lewis, “Visual Education”, The School Government Chronicle and Education Review, May 1947, 355
[vii] House of Commons Sitting of 17 July 1946; also see 16-mil Film User, February 1947, 109.
[viii] Sub-standard Film, May 22, 1947, xi
[ix] Tom Rice, Conservative Convergence: The Daily Mail and the Making of Modern Media (Bloomsbury, 2026).
[x] Film User, November 1947, 13.

Images:
Top:  A Cartoon from the Film User Magazine introducing the filmstrip to its readers and differentiating it from film projection (November 1947). Courtesy British Film Institute.

Left: Frames from the filmstrip Map-Making (C) The Big City (Unicorn Head, c.1947). Filmstrips helped teach the British students, orienting them to the postwar world. Courtesy National Library of Scotland.