John Grierson/Night Mail Flashcards
John Grierson was born on 26 April 1898 in Deanston, ________, graduating from Glasgow University after a period in the Royal Navy during the First World War.
Scotland.
Grierson spent four years in the USA at the University of _________, developing an interest in mass communications while on a Rockerfeller fellowship grant.
Chicago.
Grierson spent some time in ____ _____, and helped prepare Segei Eisentstein’s Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin) (Goskino, USSR, 1925) for an American audience, re-editing it to comply with New York State censors.
New York.
On his return to Britain, Grierson approached the _______ Marketing Board (a trade promotion body for the British Empire) with a plan to persuade them to use film as a medium of communication.
Empire.
Securing funds from the _________, he was commissioned to make Drifters (which premiered at the London Film Society as support to the first British screening of Grierson’s edit of Bronenosets Potyomkin).
Treasury.
The success of this first film led him to a position as Head of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit, which grew from Grierson and an assistant in 1930 to a staff of over thirty by _____.
1933.
Developing new filmmakers such as Paul Rotha and Harry Watt, he also hired in talents from abroad in the form of Alberto ___________ and Robert Flaherty.
Cavalcanti.
In 1934 the Empire Marketing Board was dissolved and Grierson’s team became the GPO Film Unit, producing such important works as Night Mail (GPO, UK, 1936 Dir: Harry Humphrey _________ to the team of filmmakers, and using the talents of contemporary ‘emerging stars’ in both literary and music fields such as Louis McNeice, W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten.
Jennings.
Grierson himself left in _____ to found the Film Centre as an advisory service to documentary filmmakers.
1937.
Two years later, as war appeared on the horizon, the Imperial Relations Trust sent Grierson to Canada to organise production there, resulting in the development of the National Film Board of Canada, and he went on similar trips during the war years to _________ and New Zealand.
Australia.
Returning to Britain in ______, he worked from 1948 for the Central Office of Information (the government film production arm) but was prevented from significant documentary production by the economics of postwar Britain.
1946.
He later moved into television where he spent several years before returning to ________, where he ended his career as a university lecturer.
Canada.
Perhaps the most celebrated film documentary in history, this focuses on the GPO’s ‘Postal Special’ – a post train that travelled up the country from London to ________.
Scotland.
Celebrating the postal workers’ skills, efficiency, unity and determination to deliver the post on time, directors Harry _____ and Basil Wright created heroes out of ‘ordinary’ working men doing ‘ordinary’ jobs.
Watt.
The film is structured around the journey of a ______ train, which carries mail north from a central London sorting office, dispatching it at ‘automated’ points in mail bags (collecting outward-bound mail at the same time), and at key station junctions (again collecting more outward-bound post).
Post.
