ABSTRACT
Between 1951 and 1987 the Children’s Film Foundation was a brand that was as recognisable in British cinema as the Carry On series or Hammer’s fantasy pictures. Unlike the latter two, the works of the CFF – as it is colloquially known – have often been ignored by British film academia; even the indefatigable Raymond Durgnat does not cover the Foundation in his seminal tome on post-war cinema in the UK A Mirror for England, first published in 1970. In the past twenty years the major source materials have been Rowana Agajanian’s detailed study ‘Just for Kids?’ Saturday Morning Cinema and Britain’s Children’s Film Foundation (1998) and Terry Staple’s All Pals Together (1997). Even during the Foundation’s peak period of film, the trade press largely ignored the CFF.
