our working lives, then and now

Filmed over a 12-month period, this study of children’s games played in London streets and playgrounds stands out for its freshness and spontaneity; it remains an important companion piece to Peter and Iona Opie’s classic studies of children’s games and rhymes.

Director Leslie Daiken demonstrates considerable skill and understanding in the way he captures the children, whose games range from the repetitive tongue-twisters chanted by the girls to a small boy trailing a stick along iron railings.

Made over a decade after the end of the war, the film also stands as a record of the bomb sites that pockmarked London and provided many urban children with a place to play. (Robin Baker)

You can watch this and over 1200 other complete films and TV programmes from the BFI National Archive free of charge at the new BFI Mediatheque – http://www.bfi.org.uk/mediatheque This film is available to buy as part of the BFI’s ‘Free Cinema’ DVD – http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_150.html

East Row (2007) and Southam Street (1957).

Photos: Roger Mayle (1955-1957)
Film: One Potato, Two Potato (1957)
Music: “Bad Penny Blues”, Humphrey Lyttleton

Peter Gibbs, a reporter for the Hertfordshire Mercury, explains his approach to writing copy for the local paper. Although he describes Hertford as a “peaceful town”, he tries to find newsworthy tales from across the county, attending council meetings and village fetes in the search for a regional scoop. Hertford Castle, County Hall and Parliament Square are all visited in Gibbs’ travels through the town, which is thought to have been the inspiration for Meryton, the home of the Bennet family in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’. (Alex Davidson)

Narrated by future Poet Laureate Cecil Day Lewis, ‘Figures in a Landscape’ offers a poetic portrait of sculptor Barbara Hepworth and the otherworldly Cornwall landscapes that inspired her work. Priaulx Rainier’s haunting score beautifully complements the extraordinary works of art, placed in the Cornish spaces that influenced them. Hepworth had been commissioned to design sculptures for the Festival of Britain two years before this film, and remains one of Britain’s most celebrated sculptors – she was made a Dame in 1965. She died during a fire at her St. Ives studio in 1975. (Alex Davidson)

The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire’s major new art gallery, opens to the public on 21 May 2011 — http://www.hepworthwakefield.org

You can see the complete film and over 2000 other titles free of charge in the BFI Mediatheques — http://www.bfi.org.uk/mediatheque (less info)

John Krish is one of British cinema’s best-kept secrets: a master of post-war documentary filmmaking who repeatedly turned his works for sponsors into not just effective non-fiction films, but truly stirring cinema to rank alongside the work of the world’s greatest directors.

We invited you to submit questions to Krish about his career in film. These are his responses!

A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War Britain is available on DVD and Blu-ray:
http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_18913.html