London Line

Dates

1964 - 1966

Category

Cinemagazine - Government

History

London Line was the Central Office of Information’s first studio-based magazine programme produced at the Granville Studios in Fulham, London. It was jointly sponsored by two government departments, the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office and made in four versions for weekly distribution: one version for the ‘Old Commonwealth,' Australia and Canada; one for the ‘New Commonwealth,' primarily the newly independent states of Africa and the Caribbean; as Aqui Londres for Latin America and an Arabic edition Adwa Wa Aswat. Generally an issue would contain primarily cultural stories, many featuring live music and scientific breakthroughs mixed in with interviews. Although there was some cross-over of content, many stories were specifically designed for the target audience of each edition. For example, one of the earliest issues of London Line (New Commonwealth version) featured an interview with the Reverend Ogundura a parish priest from Nigeria, working in Britain together with a music item from Mike Falana and the African Messengers. Above all the style of London Line was completely contemporary, reflected in the studio, the presenters and most evocatively in its title sequence, which was specifically foregrounded. These sequences were particularly important since they were repeated on a regular basis and effectively functioned in a similar way to an advertisement, distilling Britain into a single package lasting around 20 seconds. Designed by Eddie Newstead, the London Line titles utilised the latest techniques of graphic design to present a rapidly cut collage of black and white illustrations including a London streetmap, Nelson reflected in a woman’s sunglasses, televisions, tower blocks and the Beatles culminating in the words ‘London Line African Correspondents Reporting From London.' Indeed many of its ‘correspondents,' such as Lionel Ngakane and John Bankole-Jones became well-known personalities in countries such as Uganda and Kenya.

Provenance

The data for this series has been compiled from existing production files [INF 6] held at The National Archives, COI index cards and production files held on microfilm at Film Images and existing copies of London Line held at the British Film Institute. There is no record of the actual release date, in terms of day, month or year, for issues of London Line. Where the year has been given in the release date field it has been calculated from the scripts and programme breakdowns that still exist.

Other Information

See separate entries on London Line (Colour series 1) and London Line (Colour series 2).

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)