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THE CAMERA IS OURS: BRITAIN’S WOMEN DOCUMENTARY MAKERS

Various | 1935-67 | 100 MINS
UK
The trailblazing and innovative filmmakers featured in the programme all found ways to make work that showcased their distinctive talents and captured aspects of British life that would have eluded their male colleagues, in places such as the seaside, their homes, during pregnancy, the home front of WWII and through the social and domestic changes of the 1960s.

In Detail

The Camera is Ours: Britain's Women Documentary Makers includes five films from key pioneers of the documentary form:

‘Beside the Seaside’ (Marion Grierson, 1935, 23m) is lyrical, inventive, and gives us all the pleasures of Britain’s coast.
‘They Also Serve’ (Ruby Grierson, 1940, 9m) is a dramatized documentary, and a hymn to the dedication of “the Housewives of Britain” during wartime.
‘Birth-day’ (Brigid ‘Budge’ Cooper, 1945, 22m) explores the mysteries of maternity – this is the real ‘Call the Midwife’!
‘Homes for the People’ (Kay Mander, 1945, 23m) uses the then-radical technique of allowing working-class women to describe their own lives.
‘Something Nice to Eat’ (Sara Erulkar, 1967, 21m) – the psychedelic spirit of the 1960s is ushered in by Sarah Erulkar’s film featuring Jean Shrimpton.

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