Home and Away

Dates

1954 - 1961

Category

Cinemagazine - Industrial

History

Home and Away was a series of black and white cinemagazines made for employees and the communities surrounding Babcock & Wilcox plants in Paisley and Renfrew, Scotland. Initially devised as a quarterly magazine, it described itself as ‘a film review of Babcock achievements, sport, social and local events for members of the Babcock & Wilcox family’. Issue one included the Cowal Games, the Scottish Industries Exhibition, Calder Hall atomic power station and the Babcock boilers at Castle Donington power station. A Scottish commentator was used but a ‘broad accent’ was avoided because although primarily shown within Scotland, they also had some international distribution. The company claimed in 1956 that each issue, of around 15 minutes, was seen by 60,000 people, after it was shown in eleven cinemas over three weeks. It was then shown throughout the Babcock Works at Renfrew and Dumbarton by means of a mobile van seating 150 for another three weeks. The estimate was that 2,000 employees viewed the film this way. Twenty issues of the series were produced with many of the stories re-packaged as Babcock Review.

Provenance

The records of this series were compiled from donor files at the British Film Institute, and the records of the Scottish Screen Archive.

Films in this series can be obtained from:

Film Archive

Name

British Film Institute (BFI)

Email

For BFI National Archive enquiries: nonfictioncurators@bfi.org.uk For commercial/footage reuse enquiries: footage.films@bfi.org.uk

Web

http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web

Phone

020 7255 1444

Fax

020 7580 7503

Address

21 Stephen Street
London W1T 1LN

Notes

The BFI National Archive also preserves the original nitrate film copies of British Movietone News, British Paramount News, Empire News Bulletin, Gaumont British News, Gaumont Graphic, Gaumont Sound News and Universal News (the World War II years are covered by the Imperial War Museum).

Series held

View all series held by British Film Institute (BFI)