The Story of British Propaganda Film

by Scott Anthony, Mark Duguid (Editor), Patrick Russell (Editor)

Overview

The story of the British propaganda film is the story of mass democracy in 20th-century Britain, as the nation has shifted from global superpower to post-colonial state via globalisation, entanglements with Europe and experiments with various types of liberal economics. Diving into the BFI's unique National Archive and examining the output of organisations and institutions such as the British Council, the GPO Film Unit, the Ministry of Information and the Central Office of Information, this book traces the history of British propaganda film, from documentaries about British sporting prowess to the influencing possibilities of emerging applications and technologies such as Face2Face and AI.

Propaganda in the early 20th century was an expression of power and patronage: an entreaty to believe in, join or fight for a cause. The propaganda film now exists as much to confuse, misdirect and occlude the ability to understand or interrogate power. Though it is commonly understood as a kind of state-sponsored psychological warfare, this book examines propaganda in its widest sense, from campaign films that aimed to manage mass democracy to videos micro-targeted to niche audiences and delivered through digital platforms such as YouTube.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839021398
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/03/2024
Series:	British Screen Stories
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Scott Anthony is a jourbanalist and historian based at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His books include Night Mail (BFI, 2007), Public Relations and the Making of Modern Britain (2012) and the co-edited volume The Projection of Britain: A History of the GPO Film Unit (BFI, 2012). He has worked as a jourbanalist for Future Publishing, The Guardian and The Times and has worked as a freelancer for a wide range of media organisations in the UK, North America and Asia, including the BBC, ITV, The New Statesman, The Tablet, The Jewish Chronicle and the LRB Blog.

Table of Contents

Contents
Foreword
1: What is Propaganda?
2. The challenge of democracy
- Close-up: Sports & pastimes
3. The tiger in the smoke: The Second World War and after
- Close-up: Work & Workers
4. Winds of Change and White Heat: Decolonisation & Cold War
- Close-up: Landmarks & Landscapes
5. The Deindustrial Revolution: from the Oil Crisis to the GFC
- Close-up: State & Ceremony
6. Nothing is true and everything is possible: propaganda film in the 21st Century

Editorial Reviews

Deeply researched, smartly written, and admirably capacious, this engaging book spans a century without losing site of the fascinating people, films, and ideas that have shaped Britain's view of itself and its place on the world stage. Scott Anthony brings both deep knowledge and a keen storyteller's eye to this vital story of film's enduring power to persuade. Let yourself be convinced that the history of British propaganda film is also an important history of Britain itself.” —Brian Jacobson, author of The Cinema of Extractions and Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space

“Scott Anthony deftly weaves together the deep and pressing histories of the British state's use of media as a tool of governance shaping reality and conduct and affect against the backdrop of the political and economic transformation of that state and its place in the world. It is a brilliant expansive and readable and beautifully produced history of the deployment of mediated propaganda across time and space and amid too the radical transformations of the digital era. The Story of British Propaganda Film shall be a very useful book.” —Lee Grieveson, Professor of Media History, University College London, UK

From the Publisher