Love Letters and Live Wires: Highlights from the GPO Film Unit

Programme showcasing the sheer range of films made in the 1930s by the General Post Office Film Unit, from quintessential documentary to avant-garde animation and even musical comedy.

Thu 18 Sep: Following this screening, a panel discussion with special guests will explore the GPO's legacy to documentary, advertising and the modern world.

N or NW (1938); Love on the Wing (1939); The Fairy of the Phone (1936); The Horsey Mail (1938); Trade Tattoo (1937); A Midsummer Day's Work (1939); The Tocher (1938); Night Mail (1936). Total 80min. U

In 1933, the General Post Office made history by founding its own film production unit. The GPO Film Unit would become internationally renowned as a centre for creative, exciting public information films, leaving us perhaps the most evocative record of the 1930s zeitgeist on celluloid. This selection of some of its greatest short films, in new prints from the BFI National Archive, showcases the Unit's sheer range: from quintessential documentary (Night Mail) to avant-garde animation (Trade Tattoo) and even musical comedy (The Fairy of the Phone). Made by such varied talents as Grierson, Cavalcanti, Len Lye and Norman McLaren, the films bring alive a revolution in mass communications as epoch-changing then as the internet is now.