Newsreel

A newsreel is a form of short documentary film that included news stories and topics of topical interest, widely used From the 1910s until the middle of the 1970s.

History

Cinemas began showing silent news films in the late 1800s. Pathé began creating weekly newsreels in Europe in 1909. In 1910, Pathé started making newsreels for the United Kingdom, and in 1911, for the United States.

The first official British news cinema that only showed newsreels was the Daily Bioscope that opened in London on May 23, 1909. In 1929, William Fox purchased a former cinema called the Embassy.

The First World War saw the major countries using the newest technologies to develop propaganda for home audiences. Each used carefully edited newsreels to combine straight news reports and propaganda.

In 1936, when the BBC Television Service was launched in the United Kingdom, it was airing the British Movietone and Gaumont British newsreels for several years (except for a hiatus during World War II), until 1948, when the service launched their own newsreel programme, titled Television Newsreel, that would last until July 1954, when it was replaced by News and Newsreel.

In New Zealand, the Weekly Review was "the principal film series produced in the 1940s". The first television news broadcasts in the country, incorporating newsreel footage, began in 1960.

End of the era

Newsreels became obsolete due to technological advancements like electronic news-gathering for television news, which was introduced in the 1970s, and the nightly television news broadcast.

The last American newsreel was released on December 26, 1967, the day after Christmas. Nonetheless, some countries such as Cuba, Japan, Spain, and Italy continued producing newsreels into the 1980s and 1990s.

References