Viewpoint

Dates

1957 - 1960

Category

Cinemagazine - Government

History

Viewpoint was a series of twenty-one five-minute black and white films produced by the Central Office of Information (COI) on behalf of the Commonwealth Relations Office. These were primarily designed for broadcast on Canadian television, in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s own series of the same name. In each of these slots a prominent personality would be interviewed about his views on a topical subject, usually by Robert McKenzie, who was already presenting two other COI series by this time, Transatlantic Teleview and Commonwealth Teleview. For example in Viewpoint issue no.4, Sir John Cockcroft, head of Britain’s Atomic Research Establishment, talked about the latest developments and future application of nuclear power.

Provenance

The data for this series has been compiled from the following sources: The COI catalogue cards at BFI Archive Footage Sales, the production documents (INF 6) and the monthly divisional reports of the COI (INF 8) at The National Archives.

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)