News & Views

Over recent months the BECTU History Project has been busily continuing its interviews with women and men from across the UK film and television industries. With nearly 700 recordings so far, it is one of the most extensive audio-visual archives in the world. 

Recent interviews have included:-

John Henshall 

John Henshall is an acknowledged expert in electronic photography and digital imaging. He started at the BBC in the 1960s, and left in the mid-1970s. As a DoP in the following years he helped establish the new genre of music videos, and did innovative TV work such as ‘Spitting Image’ and ‘Network 7’. 

There are many reasons why knowing our history is important, and this is particularly so for trade unionists and trade unions.

In this era of YouTube, the iPhone, 3 D movies, Facebook, ultra high definition television , the BECTU History Project links us to a time when we worked in a different way. It tells the stories of the workers in our industry over the last 100 years – it tells about the challenges they had to overcome, the skills they developed, the enduring human relationships they forged as Britain developed into one of the world’s major centres of the film and television industry.

50 Years of British TV Documentaries: A Diary of Decline, by a film editor - Simon Rose 2014

With his unique perspective of 50 years working in documentaries, Simon Rose describes the profound cultural and political changes that have transformed the genre.