22 min

Director: Robert Flaherty

Synopsis (British Film Institute):

Industrial Britain represents a watershed in the development of the British documentary movement, the moment when artistic achievement was first blended meaningfully with social intent.

The film developed from John Grierson’s opportunistic recruitment of Robert Flaherty. Flaherty was an anthropologist-cum-filmmaker who shot to worldwide prominence with Nanook of the North (1920), a documentary that detailed the hardships of Eskimo life.

Anxious to secure a prestige director for the project (Anthony Asquith had already turned them down) The Empire Marketing Board turned hopefully to a near-destitute Flaherty. Soured by failure in Hollywood and inspired by the high-seriousness of early Soviet cinema, Flaherty exchanged the exoticism of his previous work for an appreciation of Britain’s industrial workers. Many of his sequences – like the English potter – were considered successful enough to merit a subsequent release as shorts.

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/513737/index.html