Living Tomorrow

Dates

1969 - 1983

Category

Cinemagazine - Government

History

Living Tomorrow was a long-running colour science magazine series produced by the Central Office of Information (COI) for broadcast on overseas television, initially to Japan, French Canada, Brazil and Portugal. It effectively replaced two existing series, the science series Frontier (Colour series) and the lighter magazine London Line (Colour series 2) by amalgamating the content of the former with the style of the latter. Each issue lasted around twelve minutes and consisted of between three and five items. Living Tomorrow was produced by the same team as London Line and although initially presenter-led, generally relied on a commentary to link the stories together, facilitating the production of different language versions. Although the series shared much of its content with its ‘sister’ series Tomorrow Today and Haçia El Manana, the style and distribution were very different. In 1974 production of Tomorrow Today ceased and the distribution of Living Tomorrow was extended to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean. This magazine series was not only designed to project a progressive Britain but to support the country’s export drive and it certainly provoked interest among viewers about some of the products featured. Indeed, by the late 1970s three people were employed by the COI to answer viewer’s letters about some of the subjects tackled. Although Living Tomorrow finished in 1983, the production of science series by the COI continued with Perspective (1983-1996).

Provenance

The data for this series was compiled from the following sources: COI catalogue cards and film copies held at the BFI National Archive, production files (INF 6) held at The National Archives and production files held at BUFVC.

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)