Fires Were Started

Fires Were Started

1943 · 70 min · ★ 6.1 · Drama, War

British film written and directed by Humphrey Jennings, filmed in documentary style showing the lives of firefighters through the Blitz in World War II.

Directed by Humphrey Jennings · Written by Humphrey Jennings

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Fires Were Started

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The Dim Little IslandThe Dim Little Island · 1949
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Osbert Lancaster, James Fisher, John Ormston and Ralph Vaughn Williams meditate on the history and culture of England.
Making FashionMaking Fashion · 1938
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Documentary short by Humphrey Jennings
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The Eighth Army famously adopted a German song in the Western Desert. The Crown Film Unit traces the journey of Lili Marlene from its composition in post-WW1 Hamburg, via Radio Belgrade and the Afrika Korps, through victory in Tunisia and Sicily, to an imagined post-war East End, full of light, music and bananas for sale.
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★ 7.01936
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This experiment was a “prestige advertisement” for Shell Motor Oil. As conventional animation became dominated by Walt Disney, many European filmmakers turned to puppets as an alternative, and Lye enlisted the help of avant-garde friends such as Humphrey Jennings and John Banting to make the amusing puppets. Exploring the still-complex color process, which involved the combination of three separate images, Lye creates such a vivid storm scene that reviewers hailed it as “proof that the color film has entered a new stage.” The music is Holst’s The Planets. - Harvard Film Archive
Welfare of the WorkersWelfare of the Workers · 1940
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A story of sacrifice, in which organised labour voluntarily relinquishes hard-won workplace rights after being asked "to give up by choice what Hitler takes by force."
A Diary for TimothyA Diary for Timothy · 1945
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A narrator recounts the state of Great Britain near the end of WWII via a visual diary for the titular baby boy born in September 1944.
English HarvestEnglish Harvest · 1938
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★ 6.81938
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The harvest of a pre-war British farm.
The Silent VillageThe Silent Village · 1943
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The true story of the massacre of a small Czech village by the Nazis is retold as if it happened in Wales.
Spring OffensiveSpring Offensive · 1940
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★ 6.71940
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Humphrey Jennings’s wartime short rallies Britain’s countryside, showing fields ploughed up from fallow, seed sown, and crops raised on once-idle land as part of the national push to feed the home front—an urgent, lyrical call to turn soil into sustenance.
London Can Take It!London Can Take It! · 1940
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A tribute to the courage and resiliency of Britons during the darkest days of the London Blitz.
Words for BattleWords for Battle · 1941
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Poetry by Rudyard Kipling, John Milton, and William Blake, and excerpts from speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, all read by Laurence Olivier, illuminate documentary footage of England during its defense against the Nazi blitz in World War II. This short film serves as both propaganda and as a rallying cry to the British people.
The Eighty DaysThe Eighty Days · 1944
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Humphrey Jennings’s Crown Film Unit short on the summer 1944 V-1 “doodlebug” campaign, tracking a salvo from the coast toward London as it runs Britain’s layered defenses—coastal AA guns, RAF fighters, and barrage balloons—capturing both interception and impact in a stark report of terror and resilience.
V.1.V.1. · 1944
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Short documentary on the use of the V-1 Flying Bomb during the German bombings of London.
Farewell TopsailsFarewell Topsails · 1937
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One of the last voyages of a commercial sailing ship on a trip from Cornwall.
Penny JourneyPenny Journey · 1938
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As the subtitle of the film suggests - The Story of a Post Card from Manchester to Graffham - this journey is very much focused on the process of sorting, transporting and delivering the postcard in question.
Spare TimeSpare Time · 1939
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Spare Time is a 1939 British film directed by Humphrey Jennings for the GPO Film Unit, and made for the 1939 New York World's Fair. It is 15 minutes long and documents the leisure activities of workers in the coal, steel, and cotton industries in Sheffield, Bolton, Manchester and Pontypridd. Commentary is provided by Laurie Lee.

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