Working through the end of Empire

Abstract

This chapter examines how industrial film was representing, negotiating and managing the loss of the British Empire to colonial audiences. It highlights the centrality of industry and argues that the colonial industrial film was defined, and enacting change, by a specific set of aesthetic values. Therefore, it foregrounds the work of government officials, and subject experts, within industrial film histories. Through the example of different government film units, the chapter foregrounds the performance of work and industry, both on, and off, screen, in the nation-building process. In the immediate aftermath of war film both represents and embodies a new model of industry and economic partnership for colonial audiences, revealing the informal economies of cinema that would often operate beyond independence.