digital:works have arranged a special screening at Poole Lighthouse on 28 June at 6.20pm of films made in the 50s and early 60s by documentary master John Krish.
John Krish is one of British cinema’s best-kept secrets: a master of post-war documentary filmmaking who created truly stirring cinema to rank alongside the world’s greatest directors. This screening collects together four of his most cherished films: The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953), a farewell to London’s Trams; Our School (1962), charting the beliefs of educators, and the aspirations of the decade’s young school-leavers; They Took Us to the Sea (1961), a poignant record of a seaside outing for disadvantaged children; and I Think They Call Him John (1964), a deeply moving account of an elderly widower. In each of these films – richly textured with the details of everyday post-war life – Krish combines a deep belief in human beings with a compulsive desire to push the documentary form forward.
As Britain emerged from the Second World War, new social, political and ideological challenges brought about inevitable and far-reaching change. With change came a need to look at, and engage with, the country’s people and places, values and industries in fresh and exciting ways. These films demonstrate John’s unerring ability to develop the documentary form and compose deeply felt, compassionate essays on the people at the centre of his work. They are hugely important films, not just cinematically but also historically and culturally, and their rehabilitation has been long overdue. And they were winner of the Evening Standard film awards 2010 for best documentary.
John Krish is an outstanding filmmaker and a living link to the great documentary pioneers of the past, having started his career at the Crown Film Unit during World War II, during which he assisted such major filmmakers as Humphrey Jennings, Jack Lee, Richard Massingham and Harry Watt before starting to direct his own films in the late 1940s. His career traversed most of the key developments in postwar British documentary history, with stints at British Transport Films and the Central Office of Information. He employed bold and distinctive new techniques in order to tackle an increasingly diverse array of subjects.
This screening has been especially arranged to accompany ‘The Way We Worked’, 1950s exhibition about people’s working lives at Poole Museum. The exhibition is part of a Heritage Lottery Funded community project called Our Working Lives, co-ordinated by the arts charity digital:works, which partnered with the Poole photography group, Happy Snappers, and Poole Museum, to record people’s reminiscences of the 1950s.