Battle Reconstructions and British Instructional Films

The principal company to answer Kinematograph Weekly’s call for a kinema record of the war ‘told and retold with added details’ was BIF (Figure 2.1). BIF’s series of battle reconstruction films, produced between 1921 and 1931, will form the focus of this chapter, which will trace developments in the tone of the series and the ‘details’ that were added as the decade progressed. The company was founded by H. Bruce Woolfe, who had been demobilized from the army in February 1919 — precisely the moment at which the discussions about the authenticity of Hollywood war films outlined in Chapter 1 were dominating the trade papers.’ It was registered in September and within two months, the first batch of short educational entertainments was released.2 This consisted of three travelogues and two nature films which were received by Kineweekly with the comment that the company should drop the word ‘Instructional’ from its title, as it ‘implies a formidable dry-as-dustness that is entirely lacking from the pictures’.3 The name remained, but BIF stayed true to a policy of presenting actuality and educational material in an entertaining manner. The changing relationship between the ‘educational’ and the ‘entertainment’ elements within its war films is a key theme of this chapter. The films were initially released into commercial cinemas, but later they became available for hire in non-theatrical and school settings through an education department, which was set up in 1925.