Shadows of Progress

Discuss releases by the BFI and the films on them.

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antnield
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#51 Post by antnield » Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:08 am

The Digital Fix on the John Krish touring programme, A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War Britain.

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Zazou dans le Metro
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#52 Post by Zazou dans le Metro » Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:53 am

antnield wrote:The Digital Fix on the John Krish touring programme, A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War Britain.
All my other viewing is on hold while I make my way through this wonderful box. Thanks for the great links to the Boom Britain/Krish interviews. John Krish heir apparent to Humphrey Jennings.
All together now....
Joh-n Krish now ...... Joh-n Krish now.. Krish now, Krish now... More Krish now.

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RossyG
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#53 Post by RossyG » Mon Nov 22, 2010 12:07 pm

The BFI should definitely put out his wonderful films Out of the Darkness and Friend Or Foe ("Townies! Townies! You can't trust townies!") as part of a Blu Ray box set entitled Children's Film Foundation volume 1.

*Hint hint* :D

I'd also love to see Aktion Familienplanung - Disco, presumably about family planning in a German disco.

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MichaelB
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#54 Post by MichaelB » Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:16 pm

The latest MovieMail podcast looks at Shadows of Progress.

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MichaelB
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#55 Post by MichaelB » Wed Nov 24, 2010 6:14 am

John Wyver's disc-by-disc survey reaches disc three.

Also, for those who couldn't make the events at BFI Southbank, the BFI Live site has been publishing edited video versions of some of them. John Krish (interviewed by Patrick Russell) and Anthony Simmons (interviewed by yours truly) are already up, with others on the way.

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MichaelB
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#56 Post by MichaelB » Wed Dec 01, 2010 3:15 pm

John Wyver's disc-by-disc survey reaches part four, with an extra instalment promised next week, covering Perspectives on Documentary Filmmaking, the new documentary commissioned to accompany this set.

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ellipsis7
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#57 Post by ellipsis7 » Wed Dec 01, 2010 5:48 pm

This is an extremely interesting box set, although less coherent and consistent than LAND OF PROMISE, for good reasons.... Initial impressions (a little simplistic) are that there are enlightened films exploring individual confrontation against adversity, personal redemption etc., and then there are those celebrating burgeoning modernity, technology, architecture & individual development etc.... The first theme seems subtextually to be portrayed more partially allied to the past, the second unquestioned and presented as presumably vitally important nevertheless... The conflict between the two themes lasts to our present time, but the overall thrust of modernity was almost more apparent in the earlier set...

Have to add, in the early/mid 1970s at school in Wiltshire, totally loved stuff such as ICI 16mm epics leanly titled 'Chlorine' etc...

pashalifi
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#58 Post by pashalifi » Sat Dec 11, 2010 6:12 am

Zazou dans le Metro wrote:
antnield wrote:The Digital Fix on the John Krish touring programme, A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War Britain.
All my other viewing is on hold while I make my way through this wonderful box. Thanks for the great links to the Boom Britain/Krish interviews. John Krish heir apparent to Humphrey Jennings.
there's been some suggestion that the four Krish films will be released as a Blu-ray in 2011. Maybe Michael B knows more?

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MichaelB
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#59 Post by MichaelB » Mon Dec 13, 2010 7:44 am

Given the gratifying success of the Krish touring programme, I'd be surprised if this hadn't been discussed at some point - but I can't confirm anything just yet.

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RossyG
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#60 Post by RossyG » Mon Dec 13, 2010 7:29 pm

I'd buy it. I watched They Took Us To the Sea yesterday and it was absolutely enchanting.

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MichaelB
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#61 Post by MichaelB » Thu Dec 16, 2010 6:31 pm

Popmatters - "It’s so substantial, and so thorough, that it becomes not so much a DVD collection as a small, single-subject library of film."

pashalifi
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#62 Post by pashalifi » Thu Jan 06, 2011 8:00 am

Bluray release confirmed (and Evening Standard Awards nomination):

John Krish’s documentary quartet nominated in Evening Standard Film Awards
The Boom Britain project’s critically-acclaimed A Day in the Life - Four Portraits of Post-War Britain by John Krish, which had an extended run at BFI Southbank and a UK cinema tour in November, has been nominated in the Evening Standard Film Awards (Best Documentary category). The Awards take place on 7 February.
A Day in the Life brings together The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953), an emotive farewell to London’s last tram; Our School (1962) which reveals the attitudes and expectations of its Secondary Modern pupils and teachers; They Took Us to the Sea (1961), children on an NSPCC seaside outing and I Think They Call Him John (1964), which sees an old war hero nearing the end of his days.
These four films along with two additional films, I Want to Go to School (1959) and Mr Marsh Comes to School (1961) will be released by BFI DVD in a Dual Format Edition (DVD and Blu-ray discs in one box) on 21 March.

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antnield
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#63 Post by antnield » Wed Jan 19, 2011 1:37 pm

The BFI sum-up this massive project with Boom Britain: The Reception, written by our own MichaelB.

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MichaelB
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#64 Post by MichaelB » Wed Feb 09, 2011 4:05 pm

BFI DVD Publishing's Sam Dunn and James Blackford are interviewed by The Raygun about the BFI's recent documentary output - highlighting Tales from the Shipyard.

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John Hodson
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#65 Post by John Hodson » Sat Apr 09, 2011 8:18 am

This set now an amazing £12.97 at Amazon; http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0041HRS9E/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

max_cherry
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#66 Post by max_cherry » Tue Apr 12, 2011 10:28 am

Now out of stock (OOP?) at Amazon.co.uk. Why?

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MichaelB
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#67 Post by MichaelB » Tue Apr 12, 2011 10:34 am

max_cherry wrote:Now out of stock (OOP?) at Amazon.co.uk. Why?
I imagine because news of that bargain price spread like wildfire and they simply ran out!

There's no question of it going OOP any time soon - the release isn't even six months old yet.

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knives
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#68 Post by knives » Tue Apr 12, 2011 1:20 pm

Selling out that quickly though suggests good things I would think. I can't believe that the BFI would have thought it would make this sort of killing. Ordered myself one after Man of Violence and Nighthawks was canceled on me.

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knives
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#69 Post by knives » Thu Jun 16, 2011 1:52 am

So I just finished the first short, David, and it always humours me how wide the net for the term documentary can be at times. A bit embarrassed too on how horrifying I found the dual 'collapses'. The real reason I came to post is to know if there is any overlap between the four big sets? I imagine given this set's sequel nature that there's nothing shared here with Land of Promise, but what of Miner's Hymn and Tales from the Shipyard? Really beyond the John Krish oddity has there been any overlap even with the smaller sets?

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MichaelB
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#70 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jun 16, 2011 2:05 am

There's no overlap between Land of Promise and Shadows of Progress, the two big general documentary surveys.

However, and probably unavoidably, there are overlaps between those and other sets. From Land of Promise, Paul Rotha's Shipyard is also on Tales from the Shipyard (it would have been mad to omit it), and the GPO and Humphrey Jennings titles are also duplicated on those sets - albeit on Blu-ray in the Jennings set.

There are fewer overlaps with Shadows of Progress, presumably because the set is newer and the films much more obscure - though it includes three out of the six John Krish films on A Day in the Life (but, as with Jennings, also on Blu-ray).

There may be overlaps with Miners Hymns in terms of source footage, but this is a completely new work by Bill Morrison, not a documentary compilation.

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knives
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#71 Post by knives » Thu Jun 16, 2011 2:27 am

Okay thanks. With that I guess I'll just stick with this one and the other two major compilations along with the Jennings and that Turksib set which I assume at it's selling point overlaps somewhere too. That is when I get to buying them. I'm learning a lot from this stuff on the history film so that alone is pretty fun not mentioning everything else.

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Wu.Qinghua
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#72 Post by Wu.Qinghua » Thu Jun 16, 2011 3:23 am

Just in case, you meant 'Portrait of a Miner' instead of 'Miners Hymns': As far as I can see, there's no overlap with 'Shadows of Progress' either.

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knives
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#73 Post by knives » Thu Jun 16, 2011 3:31 am

I knew there was a compilation for miners somewhere.

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MichaelB
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#74 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jun 16, 2011 4:18 am

Wu.Qinghua wrote:Just in case, you meant 'Portrait of a Miner' instead of 'Miners Hymns': As far as I can see, there's no overlap with 'Shadows of Progress' either.
There shouldn't be. Unless it's completely unavoidable (for instance, you clearly can't leave the GPO and Humphrey Jennings out of a 1930s/40s documentary survey, you can't leave Jennings off a GPO survey and you obviously have to include previously-released titles in a complete Jennings survey - and it would have been utterly perverse to have omitted one of the greatest British films about shipbuilding from a survey of the subject, regardless of whether it had already appeared on Land of Promise), there seems to be a conscious effort to avoid excessive duplication. Not least because one of the BFI's primary aims is to get as much of this stuff released as possible - gratifyingly, the success of Land of Promise back in 2008 really flung the floodgates wide open.

A good example is the COI compilation of safety films, Stop! Look! Listen!. The general, and probably accurate, assumption was that there'd be a huge overlap between purchasers of that and existing owners of the two Network compilations of COI safety films, so apart from the utterly iconic Lonely Water (which only runs a minute or so) there was no duplication at all.

As for the Turksib collection, I think it's just Night Mail that's been previously released - and of course this will be its Blu-ray debut.

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knives
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Re: Shadows of Progress

#75 Post by knives » Fri Jul 01, 2011 8:25 pm

I'm still a long way from finishing this set, but I would like to say that the inclusion of the unknown Brenton films has already made this set worth it's weight in gold. People Apart is easily the best non-Krish film in the set so far and somehow manages to take this stiff talking heads style and turn it into this emotional success. This book(let) is definitely right about that bitterness, but I sense also a positivity that it doesn't credit him with. Both this and Thursday's Children (which I naturally had seen before) seen to suggest strongly that integration while difficult and rare is very possible. I really love that sort of meat bun personality that it provides.

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