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Emb Classics [VHS]

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The man who coined the term "documentary" got his start making films for the Empire Marketing Board. John Grierson consciously thought of himself as the successor to Sergei Eisenstein and Robert Flaherty, and strove to give his films a modern immediacy.

So, to promote inter-Empire trade and persuade consumers to "Buy Empire" we see the herring industry promoted in the 1929 silent DRIFTERS, with stark close-ups of fish and fishermen directed by Grierson himself. We see producer Grierson, as head of the E.M.B. film unit, hire Flaherty to direct the 1933 release INDUSTRIAL BRITAIN (finished by two other directors from the unit), which illustrates what goes on behind those industrial smokestacks. (Flaherty is responsible for the footage of glassmakers and potters.) And we see the travelogue-with-trade-implications SONG OF CEYLON, in which director-cinematographer-editor Basil Wright gives us a fascinating 1934 glimpse of what is now Sri Lanka.

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