About
About
All you need to know about News on Screen, present and past
Discover more through our collections and publications.
History – How the resource was developed over forty-five years
Collections – Consult archive materials and papers held at Learning on Screen.
Publications – We publish books and CDs on British newsreels and cinemagazines
The History of News on Screen
Data has been gathered on the British cinema newsreels for academic study since 1969, and under the care of the British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) since 1974. What is now called News on Screen (NoS) has been built up through six particular phases:
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The Slade Film History Register was established in 1969 by Thorold Dickinson, Professor of Film at the Slade School of Fine Art, with a grant from the Social Science Research Council. The object was ‘to create a central register of film material likely to be of interest to historians in much the same way as the National Register of Archives had done for the country’s primary written documents’. The Register began to gather and index material, showing a particular interest in the newsreels. In 1974 the Register passed into the care of the then British Universities Film Council. By this stage its
newsreel content comprised an index to 30,000 stories, and a growing collection of issue sheets (the documents on which the newsreel recorded the contents of each bi-weekly issue).
Academic interest in the newsreels was by this time starting to grow, and this interest in turn inspired a succession of publications from the BUFVC based on the Slade Film History Register holdings. Three volumes were published (in 1983, 1988 and 1993) of the Researcher’s Guide to British Newsreels, which included extensive abstracts, statistics, essays and other material relating to newsreel history.The complete collection of newsreel issue sheets in the Register was published as a set of 275 microfiche in 1984. The BUFVC were also co-organisers of two major conferences on newsreels, under the title The Story of the Century, held at the National Film Theatre in 1996 and 1998. -
In 1995 the BUFVC’s interest in newsreel research took a considerable step forward with the formation of the British Universities Newsreel Project (BUNP). Funded for four years by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, this project aimed to produce a computerised database of all of the newsreel issue sheets in the Slade Film History Register. The completed database, the British Universities Newsreel Database (BUND) comprised some 160,000 stories, representing the records of twenty-one British newsreels and cinemagazines. The result was published in March 2000 as a cross-platform (PC and Apple Mac) CD-ROM and as part of the BUFVC website, accessible to UK Higher and Further Education and BUFVC members only.
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In 1999 the BUFVC was awarded further funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to carry on the work of documenting the newsreels by adding digitised copies of 80,000 commentary scripts, cameraman’s dope sheets, assignment sheets, shot lists and other original documentation to the existing database. The British Universities Newsreel Scripts Project (BUNSP) ran from 1999 to 2003, and its bedrock was a substantial collection (some 40,000 documents) of surviving files for British Paramount News, Gaumont British News and Universal News, generously deposited with the BUFVC by Reuters Television in October 1998. The remaining scanned documents (up to 1962) came through generous co-operation with British Pathe, owners of the Pathe Gazette/Pathe News newsreel, who later donated their entire paper archive extending beyond this date to the BUFVC. Each document has been added to the existing record on the BUND and made available online in PDF format. In addition a selection of ephemera collected by the cameramen to provide additional information about their assignment, such as programmes, were published as an interactive map and oral history testmonies from newsreel cameramen were streamed online (available to UK HE/FE only). Yesterday’s News: The British Cinema Newsreel Reader was published in 2002.
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In 2004 the BUFVC was awarded a three-year AHRC Resource Enhancement grant, which saw significant new data added to the British Universities Newsreel Database (BUND). The project, ‘Cinemagazines and the Projection of Britain‘, produced the first-ever academic study of the cinemagazine, weekly or monthly news-related films such as Mining Review, The March of Time and Britain Can Make It, which were allied to the newsreels. Over 17,000 additional stories were added from over sixty series, including Around The Town (1919-1923) and Look At Life (1959-1969), and were published online as part of the BUND together with substantial biographical information. Projecting Britain: The Guide to British Cinemagazines, was published in 2008.
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In 2007 the BUFVC was awarded a grant by the David Lean Foundation to research the history of the early sound newsreel Gaumont Sound News (1929-1933) and the role of one of its editors from 1930-1931, David Lean. The project added over 2,000 stories and biographical data from this significant newsreel to the British Universities Newsreel Database (BUND) and through it, researched the transition of the newsreels, particularly in terms of the editing process, from silent to the sound format we recognise today. This was presented through a dedicated website, including a timeline with examples of the films themselves, David Lean and Gaumont Sound News.
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In 2009 BUFVC received funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to enhance the database and cross-link with the digitised newsreel films published as part of Newsfilm Online (NfO). The project, due for completion in March 2010, will add a substantial amount of data to the existing Gaumont Graphic record on News on Screen. This will include approximately 1,800 stories inputted from issue sheets from 1910 to 1915 as well as identifying missing stories, where possible, to form a more complete record of the newsreel from 1915 to 1924. The metadata from both resources will be checked and amended where necessary to enable the user to move directly between stories, gaining both moving image content and context.
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This project has three separate elements, all which should add substantial value to the resource as well as enabling BUFVC to explore new ways of presenting sound and text in an easy and intuitive way.
When the 80,000 newsreel production documents published on News on Screen (NoS) were first digitised in 2000, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) was in its infancy and only a very small percentage were recognised! So the documents were made available as pdfs for download. With this project we will OCR all the documents so that users will be able to search them, as well as the records, giving their research greater depth and the collection greater accessibility.
Five oral histories of newsreel cameramen and soundmen (from the BECTU History Project) will be published with synchronised transcripts, along with over 100 specially cleared programmes and leaflets that were picked up on assignments to inform the editorial process.
This project has been funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).
Collections
Our books and special collections are available for consultation by researchers from BUFVC members. Find out here if your institution is in BUFVC membership, or consider taking out membership of the BUFVC and taking advantage of a wide range of other special benefits.
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The BUFVC library holds most of the books published on British newsreels and cinemagazines, as well as many other titles relating to British film history and the use of film for historical research, including theses, papers and unpublished manuscripts.
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The BUFVC holds a complete set of commentary scripts (1929-1979) for the British Movietone newsreel. The Movietone collection also includes a complete copied set of the papers of the Newsreel Association of Great Britain and Ireland (the originals are held by the British Film Institute). Access to the collection is limited at present.
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The BUFVC holds the entire surviving paper collection for the British Pathe newsreel and cinemagazine series, including Pathe Gazette, Pathe News and Pathe Pictorial. This includes issue sheets, commentary scripts, cameramen’s dope sheets and shot lists, as well as some business papers, and documents relating to individual film productions, footage used for television programmes, and films distributed by Pathe. Access to the collection is limited at present. There is a general inventory available.
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A major addition to the BUFVC’s newsreel documentation holdings is the papers of British Movietone News cameraman David Samuelson. These include a detailed record of his assignments with the newsreel 1947-1959, as well as other working papers and newsreel ephemera.
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Margaret Leahy was the winner of a competition organised in 1922 by the Daily Sketch newspaper and Topical Budget newsreel to find a ‘British film star’. Her prize was to star in a Hollywood feature, and her photograph album, donated to the BUFVC by her family, documents her time on set with Buster Keaton making the film THE THREE AGES (1923). An album of newspaper clippings is also held.
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The late Norman Fisher was a cameraman with the British Movietone News newsreel between 1935 and 1979. The BUFVC holds his substantial photographic collection, including several albums relating to the newsreels, plus his diaries and other newsreel memorabilia.
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The late Norman Roper was a newsreel cameraman and editor, working with British Paramount News, Warwork News, Pathe News and British Movietone News. His newsreel effects have been passed on to the BUFVC, including photographs, news clippings, address books, posters and equipment.
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Sound engineer Reg Sutton has generously donated a copy of his manuscript memoirs to the BUFVC. Sutton worked at the BBC from 1936, joining the British Movietone newsreel in 1946, leaving them in 1960 to join the Samuelson Film Service. The memoirs include a partial list of outside broadcasts recorded by Sutton in Newcastle 1939-1948. Sutton has also donated his assignments list for his time at Movietone.
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In 1998 the BUFVC was offered a substantial collection of original documents, such as shot lists, dope sheets and commentary scripts, relating to the newsreels British Paramount News, Gaumont British News and Universal News. The majority of these have now been digitised and are available in downloadable form attached to their respective news stories on the British Universities Newsreel Database. The collection includes ephemera such as football programmes and publicity leaflets for events filmed by the newsreels. It also includes those documents not so far digitised, chiefly shot lists for unissued material.
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The Slade Film History Register was established by filmmaker Thorold Dickinson in 1969 at the Slade Film School, and aimed to create a register of documents relating to film that would be of value to historians. Central to the Register was the gathering of data relating to newsreels, in particular copies of newsreel issue sheets from the 1910s to the 1970s. The Register came into the care of the BUFVC in 1974 and formed the basis of the British Universities Newsreel Database. The Register also includes miscellaneous documents relating to history and film.
Publications
We published books and CDs on British newsreels and cinemagazines.
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Projecting Britain explores a film genre neglected for decades: the cinemagazine. Watched by millions, both in Britain and abroad, these fascinating ‘screen magazines’ reflected all aspects of popular culture from fashions and fads, to football and factories. This volume spans the history of the cinemagazine from the first known example, Kinemacolor Fashion Gazette released in 1913, through Mining Review and Look at Life to those still produced today, such as Prisons Video Magazine. A remarkably pervasive and popular form of screen entertainment, cinemagazines reveal a fascinating visual document of Britain in the twentieth century. Projecting Britain includes
- A comprehensive directory of 130 cinemagazine series from 1913 to the present day
- Six articles which examine the cinemagazine as the ‘colour supplement’ of the cinema programme, a public relations tool and purveyor of propaganda
- Original texts including correspondence, memos and extracts from books and journals
- A resources section, including a list of archive holdings and descriptive bibliography
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The Reader brings together over forty key texts on the British newsreels, from their silent beginnings to their revival as the ingredient of television documentaries. The texts come from trade-papers, memoirs, parliamentary debates, newspapers articles, publicity brochures, film reviews and academic essays past and present. The Reader documents how the newsreels were produced, how they were received, and the controversies they inspired through the conflicting demands of news and entertainment. It covers filming of two World Wars, from the invasion of Belgium to the liberation of Belsen; the Spanish Civil War; the rise of
television; and enduring arguments over censorship, propaganda and political bias in the news. It documents their organisation, the cameramen’s experiences, and the overlooked role of women in the newsreels. It covers the academic interest they have aroused, with classic studies and the best of research taking place today.
Outrageous and conservative, cowardly and courageous, impartial and manipulative, in all things entertaining the newsreels documented their times with gusto. Their sense of the news was often suspect, but their sense of what the audience wanted and understood was acute. It was that popular sensibility that kept them in the cinemas for decades. This Reader revives the spirit of a richly rewarding medium.
1st edition, edited by Luke McKernan November 2002. pbk. 330 pages. ISBN 0 901299 73 1 -
Between 1910 and 1979 the newsreels, released twice a week in British cinemas, gave millions their picture of national and world events. They have now preserved an invaluable record of life and news in the twentieth century. This is the first biographical account of someone who worked for the British newsreels to be published in over twenty years. John Turner worked as a cameraman for Gaumont-British News between 1937 and 1952. As a war correspondent he was attached to the Royal Navy and filmed in the UK, North Sea, Mediterranean, Italy, North Africa, north west Europe and the Far East.
In peace time he filmed many classic news stories, and was in India at the time of independence and Gandhi’s assassination. In 1952 he became the royal rota cameraman for the Newsreel Association, filming the royal Commonwealth tours and numerous exclusive royal events. Between 1962 and 1970 he became production manager and then news editor for Pathe News.
Filming History will be of importance to social, cultural and political historians, university courses on media and communication studies, and anyone interested in the history of British Film and the important part played in that history by the newsreels.
1st edition, December 2001, pbk, 256 pages, ISBN 0 901299 72 3 -
The papers, presentations and proceedings of an international conference held at the National Film Theatre, London, between 2 and 4 October 1996 which brought together cameramen, editors, producers, film and television researchers and academics from many countries to celebrate 100 years of news on film and television. The book provides a lively insight into the world of the newsfilm – one of the century’s most powerful forms of journalism. With its mix of formal papers, presentations and discussions, the material will inform and entertain everyone interested in news on film and television.
Edited by Clyde Jeavons, Jane Mercer and Daniela Kirchner 1998. pbk. 170pages. ISBN0 901299 69 3 -
The CD-ROM of the British Universities Newsreel Project (BUNP) database was published in March 2000, and contains details of almost 160,000 British cinema newsreel stories. Between 1910 and 1979 the newsreels, released twice a week in British cinemas, gave millions their picture of national and world events. They have now preserved an invaluable record of life and news in the twentieth century. Based on the data contained in original newsreel issue sheets, the BUNP CD-ROM contains full text and keyword search facilities, allows
users to see the order in which stories were presented in each reel, and contains other details such as footage lengths, cameramen’s credits, and regional variations to content. The CD-ROM comes with a detailed booklet giving a short history of the British cinema newsreel. For film researchers, archivists, historians and students of news media, the BUNP database CD-ROM is an indispensable tool.
The database is freely available online on the BUFVC website to UK HE/FE and BUFVC members. -
Produced by the British Universities Film & Video Council in association with the InterUniversity History Film Consortium, this CD-ROM examines the origins of the Cold War using eight contemporary newsreel stories, from Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in 1946 to the Korean War in 1950. With new historical commentaries and background text the CD-ROM forms a valuable and attractive teaching resource.
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News on Screen
Learning on Screen Suite 120,
1st Floor Holborn Gate
330 High Holborn
London WC1V 7QH
Mailing List
NEWSFILM is a mailing list for those interested in discussing, sharing and generally advocating the use of newsfilm in research and teaching. NEWSFILM is an unmoderated list, owned by the NoS staff and is open to anyone interested in the newsfilm, particularly British newsreels and cinemagazines. It is also used for all the latest news updates from the News on Screen database.
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