‘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
Jordan, James
b4bf9915-44c8-45da-823b-7f2627f33e55
August 2018
Jordan, James
b4bf9915-44c8-45da-823b-7f2627f33e55
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, .
(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.
Text
Jordan No Person 14 Sep Final
- Author's Original
Restricted to Repository staff only
Request a copy
Text
15e89f90-bbe6-4af8-aa98-50a6b4d30a7f
- Version of Record
Restricted to Repository staff only
Request a copy
More information
Published date: August 2018
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 418042
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/418042
PURE UUID: 15e89f90-bbe6-4af8-aa98-50a6b4d30a7f
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 21 Feb 2018 17:30
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 18:25
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Editor:
Jennifer Craig-Norton
Editor:
Christhard Hoffmann
Editor:
Tony Kushner
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics