Paul Childs Aug 18, 2017
We take another look back at the public information films put out by the Central Office Of Information...
I’m sat writing this on the balcony of my apartment overlooking the majestic Salford Quays. It’s a lovely afternoon and the sun is beating down as families, all dressed in their finest summer attire, chomp on ice-cream while enjoying a relaxing canal side stroll.
See related Game Of Thrones season 7 episode 5 questions answered Game Of Thrones season 7 episode 4 questions answered Game Of Thrones season 7: episode 3 questions answered
Down on the other side of the canal basin is a group of boys, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old (plus a few much younger ones), dressed in nothing but swimming trunks. They’re goading each other on to leap from the bridge into the dark waters below. One by one they take the plunge, all the while laughing and whooping.
We take another look back at the public information films put out by the Central Office Of Information...
I’m sat writing this on the balcony of my apartment overlooking the majestic Salford Quays. It’s a lovely afternoon and the sun is beating down as families, all dressed in their finest summer attire, chomp on ice-cream while enjoying a relaxing canal side stroll.
See related Game Of Thrones season 7 episode 5 questions answered Game Of Thrones season 7 episode 4 questions answered Game Of Thrones season 7: episode 3 questions answered
Down on the other side of the canal basin is a group of boys, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old (plus a few much younger ones), dressed in nothing but swimming trunks. They’re goading each other on to leap from the bridge into the dark waters below. One by one they take the plunge, all the while laughing and whooping.
- 8/15/2017
- Den of Geek
Trend-setter, impresario, phenomenon: David Bowie has shaped entire subcultures. Jon Savage traces the star's talent for reinvention and his catalytic encounter with William Burroughs
William Burroughs: The weapon of the Wild Boys is a bowie knife, an 18in bowie knife, did you know that?
David Bowie: An 18in bowie knife … you don't do things by halves do you? No, I didn't know that was their weapon. The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger. I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.
On 28 February 1974, Rolling Stone magazine published a remarkable encounter between David Bowie and William Burroughs. Entitled "Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman", the event had been hosted in November 1973 by the American journalist A Craig Copetas. As published it took the form of a Q...
William Burroughs: The weapon of the Wild Boys is a bowie knife, an 18in bowie knife, did you know that?
David Bowie: An 18in bowie knife … you don't do things by halves do you? No, I didn't know that was their weapon. The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger. I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.
On 28 February 1974, Rolling Stone magazine published a remarkable encounter between David Bowie and William Burroughs. Entitled "Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman", the event had been hosted in November 1973 by the American journalist A Craig Copetas. As published it took the form of a Q...
- 3/9/2013
- by Jon Savage
- The Guardian - Film News
It may be slightly less gory, but a new rail-safety broadcast still owes much to its 1970s predecessors
When the Central Office of Information closed in March this year, it felt like the end of an era. The Coi was the home of the public information film: it had spent 66 years dishing out death and mutilation to the nation's drink-drivers, firework-throwers and daydreaming pedestrians. Who now would warn Britain of the dangers of turning light switches on during gas leaks or indeed playing Frisbee near electrical substations?
As it turned out, reports of the public information film's demise proved to be premature: unlike those who played with matches or mixed cross-ply and radial tyres, it lives to fight another day. Network Rail has launched a new TV campaign, See Track, Think Train, aimed at raising awareness of the dangers of rail footpath crossings. Aficionados of the golden age of the...
When the Central Office of Information closed in March this year, it felt like the end of an era. The Coi was the home of the public information film: it had spent 66 years dishing out death and mutilation to the nation's drink-drivers, firework-throwers and daydreaming pedestrians. Who now would warn Britain of the dangers of turning light switches on during gas leaks or indeed playing Frisbee near electrical substations?
As it turned out, reports of the public information film's demise proved to be premature: unlike those who played with matches or mixed cross-ply and radial tyres, it lives to fight another day. Network Rail has launched a new TV campaign, See Track, Think Train, aimed at raising awareness of the dangers of rail footpath crossings. Aficionados of the golden age of the...
- 10/9/2012
- by Alexis Petridis
- The Guardian - Film News
Andy Murray's Us Open victory and the Hillsborough report were only the most moving highlights of an excellent week
Us Open 2012 (R5 Live) | iPlayer
Hillsborough report (R5 Live) | iPlayer
Walter Kershaw: The UK's First Street Artist? (R4) | iPlayer
David Frost's Hollywood Greats (R2) | iPlayer
The older I get, the more I enjoy sport. Not the actual high-kicking in a slimy bikini, necking Disgusto-nrg-Kola side of sport, though it's Ok on special occasions, like parents' evening. No, I'm more enamoured of wrapped-in-a-duvet, tea-and-toast sport. Sport appreciation. Along with most of the British population I'm a world-beating, all-the-medals spectator. The Olympics and Paralympics proved our nation's worth in this, of course: that amazing atmosphere didn't make its way into the stadium without years of spectator practice, slumped with a tinny in front of Match of the Day, listening to the Test match while making a complicated Sunday sandwich, hitting the...
Us Open 2012 (R5 Live) | iPlayer
Hillsborough report (R5 Live) | iPlayer
Walter Kershaw: The UK's First Street Artist? (R4) | iPlayer
David Frost's Hollywood Greats (R2) | iPlayer
The older I get, the more I enjoy sport. Not the actual high-kicking in a slimy bikini, necking Disgusto-nrg-Kola side of sport, though it's Ok on special occasions, like parents' evening. No, I'm more enamoured of wrapped-in-a-duvet, tea-and-toast sport. Sport appreciation. Along with most of the British population I'm a world-beating, all-the-medals spectator. The Olympics and Paralympics proved our nation's worth in this, of course: that amazing atmosphere didn't make its way into the stadium without years of spectator practice, slumped with a tinny in front of Match of the Day, listening to the Test match while making a complicated Sunday sandwich, hitting the...
- 9/15/2012
- by David Frost, Miranda Sawyer
- The Guardian - Film News
Drowning, rabies, electrocution: 70s public information films suggested you could die at any moment. And they were so frightening, they still haunt people today
• Peter Bradshaw on the horror of public information films
• Jude Rogers on how public information films haunt today's directors
In the mid 90s, a company secured the rights to release a selection of classic public information films on video, under the title Charley Says. I bought it not, as I suppose most people did, in a haze of nostalgia, but in the spirit of confronting a terrible fear, like those people who try to overcome their aerophobia by booking on to a course that involves a trip in a plane.
I can't remember the first time I saw The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, the 1973 public information film in which a Bergman-esque Death literally stalks children playing on riverbanks. That was part of the problem:...
• Peter Bradshaw on the horror of public information films
• Jude Rogers on how public information films haunt today's directors
In the mid 90s, a company secured the rights to release a selection of classic public information films on video, under the title Charley Says. I bought it not, as I suppose most people did, in a haze of nostalgia, but in the spirit of confronting a terrible fear, like those people who try to overcome their aerophobia by booking on to a course that involves a trip in a plane.
I can't remember the first time I saw The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, the 1973 public information film in which a Bergman-esque Death literally stalks children playing on riverbanks. That was part of the problem:...
- 4/2/2012
- by Alexis Petridis
- The Guardian - Film News
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