Middle East Newspots

Dates
1960 - 1961
Category
Cinemagazine - Government
History
Middle East Newspots was a black and white series of topical stories produced in Arabic, Persian and French language versions by the Central Office of Information (COI) for the Foreign Office. The films, each lasting around four minutes, were made and distributed on a weekly basis. The first issue was shot in January 1960 and seems to have replaced People and Places, also known as Arab Televiews (1959-1960) and Report from London, also known as Persian Televiews (1959-1960). Although only records of the lead stories survive, it does seem likely that a few issues were taken from another COI production Portrait (1959-1965), such as LABORATORY ASSISTANT, issue no. 50 and FARMER, issue no. 51. From issue no. 87 in 1961 the title changed to Letter from London.
Provenance
The data for this series was compiled from the following sources: the COI catalogue cards and the Films From Britain catalogue 1968/1969 held at the BFI National Archive, the monthly divisional reports of the COI (INF 8) held at The National Archives. Only information on the lead stories of this series survive and have been taken from the COI catalogue cards at Film Images, which occasionally repeats the lead stories. It is impossible to verify this since none of the films still exist. There is no record of the actual release date, in terms of day and month, for issues of Middle East Newspots. Where there is a year mentioned, this has been taken from the subject of the story.
Other Information
See separate entry on Letter from London.

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