The Camera is Ours: Britain’s Women Documentary Makers

Beside the Seaside

dir. Marion Grierson, 1935, 23 mins

Marion Grierson directed the lyrical, witty and inventive Beside the Seaside in 1935 – the year before the widely admired Night Mail (1936). The Grierson name is synonymous with the British documentary story, rarely, however is Marion Grierson the focal point. She was the youngest sister of John Grierson, who introduced her to filmmaking and she swiftly became an accomplished director, deftly using an inventive array of cinematographic techniques to stylish effect. Following her marriage to fellow documentary filmmaker, Donald Taylor, and the birth of their first child, she stepped back from film directing.

They Also Serve

dir. Ruby Grierson, 1940, 9 mins

As sister to Marion and John Grierson, Ruby played a pivotal role in the success of the early days of the genre. She challenged her brother – often referred to as the father of British documentary: “The trouble with you is that you look at things as though they were in a goldfish bowl. I’m going to break your goldfish bowl.” She went ahead and smashed the glass, starting with her (uncredited) work on Housing Problems. She told the working-class residents who feature in the film: “The camera is yours. The microphone is yours. Now tell the bastards exactly what it’s like to live in slums.”

She went on to make over ten films, including some for the war effort. She was killed in 1940, whilst making a film about the evacuation of children to Canada when the liner they were travelling on was torpedoed. They Also Serve is a dramatised documentary dedicated to ‘the Housewives of Britain’ and the emphasis is very much on dutiful service of a domestic kind. The film follows a day in the wartime life of ‘Mother’, who is ever-smiling in her support of her weary husband and truculent daughter. Despite it all, she counts herself lucky.

Birth-day

dir. Brigid ‘Budge’ Cooper and assistant dir. Mary Beales, 1945, 22 mins

Directed by Budge Cooper/Mary Orrom (there are differing accounts of who did what) and photographed by the legendary cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky (Get Carter) this dramatised public information film encourages expectant mothers to take advantage of existing maternity services. It demonstrates social attitudes of the era with a man explaining details of pregnancy and childbirth in a classic example of what would today be called “mansplaining”.

Brigid “Budge” Cooper worked as a ‘continuity girl’, producer and director. Pragmatic and determined, when making a film for the National Coal Board she challenged the official ban on women going down a mine – she took the matter to court, and won. Mary Beales (later Orrom) also worked for the NCB Film Unit, as well as later becoming an admired sculptor.

Homes for the People

dir. Kay Mander, 1945, 23 mins

From continuity girl to director and back to continuity girl, Mander’s career in the film industry took some unconventional turns. She spent her teenage years in Berlin in the 1930s working as a receptionist at Goebbels’ International Film Congress. Mander used this opportunity to make contacts within the British film industry, resulting in a job at Alexander Korda’s London Films.

One of her most powerful and radical films is Homes for the People which used the bold yet simple technique of allowing working class women to describe their living conditions, one of them vividly slating the design of her suburban house and summing up: “I call it a muck-up.”

Something Nice to Eat

dir. Sarah Erulkar, 1967, 21 mins

“Cooking is a kind of loving.” Featuring Jean Shrimpton, and sponsored by the Gas Council, Sarah Erulkar’s film encapsulates the spirit of the 1960s in a gloriously entertaining, sometimes patronising and always visually inventive tribute to the delights of good food, preferably prepared using a gas cooker. Erulkar directed 80-plus documentaries for the Central Office of Information (COI), the National Coal Board Film Unit, the Gas Council, The General Post Office (GPO) and many others over the course of a career that spanned 40 years.