The Pacemakers

Dates

1969 - 1971

Category

Cinemagazine - Government

History

The Pacemakers was a series of twenty-six colour magazine programmes produced by the Central Office of Information for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Each programme focused on an individual who in some way was challenging the status quo in their chosen profession or area of interest and creating something new. This could be an object itself, in the case of Sam McGredy’s roses, or its application, Eric Laithwaite’s vision for the linear motor. New ideas in education and play were discussed by those who were implementing them such as Henry Pluckrose, the headmaster of a primary school in London. Each programme was around thirteen minutes and often presented by the subject themselves, as with the actress Glenda Jackson and the pioneering conservationist Bob Boote. The series was distributed to Canada and Australia and replaced London Line (Colour series 2). It was also slightly re-edited and packaged as the series No Two the Same with language tracks in Arabic, French and Latin American Spanish for world-wide distribution.

Provenance

The data for this series was compiled from the following sources: the COI catalogue cards and viewing copies of the films held at BFI Footage Sales and production documents (INF 6) held at The National Archives. The COI synopsis have been taken from the press releases issued at the time.

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)