Collaboration enables GPO film classics to be seen by over 2 million!

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Since May 2007 the GPO films 'Colour Box' and 'Spare Time' have been seen by over 2 million people.

As a result of a highly successful partnership between The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) and the British Film Institute (BFI) Colour Box  and Spare Time have been on display at Tate Modern and at cinemas around the UK.

Len Lye’s pioneering film Colour Box (1935) has been on display at the Tate Modern since May 2007 and it was also screened at 35 cinemas across the UK with Patrice Leconte’s film My Best Friend.  At Tate Modern, where the film is on a looped DVD in the Idea & Object collection display on Level 5, the film has been seen by over two million people.  The film will potentially be seen by another 500,000 visitors before the display changes in April 2008.  Colour Box has also been seen by another massive 54,000 people in various UK venues including Cineworld and City Screen cinemas and a range of independent art houses, courtesy of Optimum Releasing.

Still from Colour BoxColour Box is one of the great classics of British animation – a dizzying parade of dancing lines, squiggles, dots and arabesques – set to a joyful Cuban soundtrack.  A daring and delightful three-minute film, it is also probably one of the most innovative uses of film in the history of advertising and a tribute to the instincts of the GPO Film Unit under John Grierson.  The original hand-painted elements of Colour Box have been painstakingly preserved and restored by the BFI National Archive and are as fresh and bright as when they were first seen on British cinema screens.

As part of the BPMA’s work with the BFI, Spare Time, a GPO film directed by Humphrey Jennings has been shown at cinemas across the UK as part of the BFI’s documentary season.  Spare Time (1939) – one of the archive GPO Film Unit documentaries in The Royal Mail Archive – was shown as part of Finest Hour, an archival programme of Humphrey Jennings’ shorts.  This programme was shown at over 40 different venues across the UK, including cinemas in London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and Bristol, and was seen by over 3,000 people.

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