This film is part of Free
Telephone (Abstract)
Early avant-garde short from the GPO, encouraging use of the telephone in an emergency.
Overview
This early short from the GPO Film Unit trumpets the power of the telephone in an emergency, situating this modern marvel in a historical tradition of warning devices alongside the tom-toms of primitive man and the bonfires of the Middle Ages. The GPO favoured experimental filmmakers and artists such as Len Lye, and while this film isn’t credited to a particular director, it references this avant-garde tradition in its modernist montage of stark typography, animation and oblique soundscape.
This government film is a public record, preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives, home to more than 1,000 years of British history.
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