Humphrey Jennings

Widely considered one of Britain’s greatest documentary filmmakers, Humphrey Jennings has long been critically acclaimed for films which beautifully evoke everyday heroism in times of war and peace. Combining poetic observation and humanism with a subtle yet intense national feeling that is also very personal, Jennings was a visionary and progressive patriot in the tradition of Williams Blake and Morris.

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  • Listen to Britain

    Documentary, public information film, morale booster; propaganda film. All descriptions that apply to Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister's extraordinary war-time film. Using his customary combination of poetry and propaganda, Jennings constructs a collage of the various people and classes ...

  • London Can Take It!

    Humphrey Jennings and Harry Watt's famous film, produced at the GPO film unit, is an enduring example of British self-mythology and rousing evidence of the artistic potential of supposed propaganda. A hymn to our capital city's resilience during the Blitz, structured as a day-in-the-life of stiff...

  • The Silent Village

    The villagers of Cwmgiedd, southwest Wales, are the stars of Humphrey Jennings' unforgettably inventive drama-doc. At Lidice, Czechoslovakia, a mining community's entire male population was executed by the Nazis in 1942. Jennings (often said to be Britain's greatest documentary filmmaker) ingenio...

  • Spare Time

    Humphrey Jennings epitomises the artist-filmmaker and this poetic evocation of ordinary people enjoying well-earned time away from the mill, mine, or foundry is a forerunner to Jennings' later wartime greats such as Listen to Britain. Joyous shots of people either pigeon fancying, ballroom danci...