B.B.C. made a feature-length documentary. The
Ministry of Labour made Workers and Jobsin
which for the first time a whole film was built
round the living and speaking personnel of a
Labour Exchange, together with those who had
come to it in search of work.
It was quite clear that the whole field was ripe
for development. Under the guidance of the
documentary film makers, new production units
were started Strand and the Realist Film Unit
and, earlier still, the offshoot of the Gaumont-
British Corporation, G-B Instructional. Grierson
himself left the G.P.O. Unit and founded Film
Centre, which was to act as a consultative body,
forming a liaison between the potential sponsor
and production units. With this new terrain to
explore, new techniques were developed. Workers
and Jobs paved the way for To-day We Live,
The Saving of Bill Blewitt, Housing Problems and
Children at School. In all these films real people
not only appeared on the screen but acted and
talked, sometimes by means of dialogue, some
times in direct interviews.
It was probably inevitable that this third period
should lead pretty rapidly into a reopening of the
world implications of the documentary idea.
We Live in Two Worlds presented communi
cations as the key to the brotherhood of man,
taking as examples the links between Switzerland
and Britain. Units went abroad in increasing
numbers, to Iran, to Australia, to Malay, to Africa.
Simultaneously, through the Imperial Relations
Trust, Grierson was attuning the Dominions to
the documentary idea, and some of the older
r35
I932 CONTACT
Paul Rotha British Instructional
1932 THE NEW OPERATOR
Stuart Legg G.P.OFilm Unit
1930 THE port OF LONDON (unfinished)
John Grierson (Empire Marketing Board)
1931 THE COUNTRY COMES TO TOWN
Basil Wright Empire Marketing Board)
