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‘The most varied, colourful, confusing hubub in the world’: The East End, Television and the Documentary Imagination, July 1939

‘The most varied, colourful, confusing hubub in the world’: The East End, Television and the Documentary Imagination, July 1939
‘The most varied, colourful, confusing hubub in the world’: The East End, Television and the Documentary Imagination, July 1939
On the evening of Wednesday 12 July 1939, only seven weeks before the closure necessitated by the Second World War, the BBC television presented East End, a 45-minute documentary in which social anthropologist and co-founder of Mass Observation Tom Harrisson 'explore[d] London's East End, introducing Cockney and Jew, Lascar and Chinaman, and others of its inhabitants'. This programme combined pre-recorded telecine (film) sequences, 'live' studio-based interviews, artisan demonstrations and design effects, all bound together by Harrisson's presentation and commentary. Unfortunately, as with so much early television, there is no surviving copy of the programme, but with the help of press reviews, personal papers and production files held in the archives of the BBC and Mass Observation it is possible to reconstruct it and a sense of how 'the most varied, colourful, confusing hubub in the world' was depicted in the black and white world of television.
251-261
Routledge
Jordan, James
b4bf9915-44c8-45da-823b-7f2627f33e55
Craig-Norton, Jennifer
Hoffmann, Christhard
Kushner, Tony
Jordan, James
b4bf9915-44c8-45da-823b-7f2627f33e55
Craig-Norton, Jennifer
Hoffmann, Christhard
Kushner, Tony

Jordan, James (2018) ‘The most varied, colourful, confusing hubub in the world’: The East End, Television and the Documentary Imagination, July 1939. In, Craig-Norton, Jennifer, Hoffmann, Christhard and Kushner, Tony (eds.) Migrant Britain: Histories and Historiographies: Essays in Honour of Colin Holmes. (Routledge Studies in Radical History and Politics) 1st ed. London. Routledge, pp. 251-261. (doi:10.4324/9781315159959).

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

On the evening of Wednesday 12 July 1939, only seven weeks before the closure necessitated by the Second World War, the BBC television presented East End, a 45-minute documentary in which social anthropologist and co-founder of Mass Observation Tom Harrisson 'explore[d] London's East End, introducing Cockney and Jew, Lascar and Chinaman, and others of its inhabitants'. This programme combined pre-recorded telecine (film) sequences, 'live' studio-based interviews, artisan demonstrations and design effects, all bound together by Harrisson's presentation and commentary. Unfortunately, as with so much early television, there is no surviving copy of the programme, but with the help of press reviews, personal papers and production files held in the archives of the BBC and Mass Observation it is possible to reconstruct it and a sense of how 'the most varied, colourful, confusing hubub in the world' was depicted in the black and white world of television.

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Published date: August 2018

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Local EPrints ID: 418042
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/418042
PURE UUID: 15e89f90-bbe6-4af8-aa98-50a6b4d30a7f

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Date deposited: 21 Feb 2018 17:30
Last modified: 05 Jun 2024 20:05

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Contributors

Author: James Jordan
Editor: Jennifer Craig-Norton
Editor: Christhard Hoffmann
Editor: Tony Kushner

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