Frontier

Dates

1964 - 1965

Category

Cinemagazine - Government

History

Frontier was a series of fourteen black and white films on science and technology produced by the Central Office of Information on behalf of the Commonwealth Relations Office. The films were made by a variety of companies, including United Motion Pictures (London) Ltd, British Films, Eyeline Films, and directed by documentary filmmakers such as Michael Orrom and Margaret Thomson. Each 13-minute film dealt with an aspect of current British research such as radio astronomy, the development of computers, the invention of the hovercraft and the progress of nuclear power. It was primarily designed for English-speaking countries but three language versions were available, in Arabic, Persian and Asian English.

Provenance

The data for this series was compiled from the following sources: the COI catalogue cards and production documents on microfilm held at Film Images, production documents [INF 6] and monthly divisional reports of the COI [INF 8] held at The National Archives, the Films From Britain catalogue, the British National Film Catalogue and viewing copies held at the British Film Institute.

Other Information

See separate entry on Frontier (Colour series).

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)