ABSTRACT
An artist must be excused for the belief that the group within which he works is the best of all groups, and that little of importance is happening elsewhere. And the historian of art or literature is a retrospective critic, who finds his interest in quality. But, if film is a medium of communication, there is more to its past than the highlights of artistic achievement, just as there have been important and influential books in the past which were written to communicate something, not to create literary masterpieces. For everywhere people were making teaching films, advertising, current affairs and propaganda for everything from the Conservative and Unionist Party to teetotalism, films of exploration, abstract films and many others as well as the documentary as it is commonly understood. The formation of the British Film Institute, which was a practical if confused expression by society of the belief that film was too important to be left to the film-makers.
