Reel History of Britain

[introduction to each episode]

Melvyn Bragg:
Just over a century ago, the motion camera was invented. It changed forever the way we recall our history. For the first time, we could see life through the eyes of ordinary people. Across this series, we'll bring these rare archive films back to life with the help of our vintage mobile cinema. We'll be inviting people with a story to tell to step on board and re-live moments they thought were gone forever. They'll see their relatives on-screen for the first time, come face-to-face with their younger selves, and celebrate our amazing twentieth century past. This is the people's story - *our* story. Our vintage mobile cinema was originally commissioned in 1967 to show training films to workers. Today it's been lovingly restored and loaded up with remarkable film footage, preserved for us by the British Film Institute and other national and regional film archives. In this series we'll be travelling to towns and cities across the country, and showing films from the twentieth century that give us the Reel History of Britain.