The Best of COI: Five decades of Public Information Films on Blu-ray [read more]
This'll learn you
Established in April 1946, the Central Office of Information (COI) was the successor to the wartime Ministry of Information and went on to produce and distribute thousands of films for use across Britain, the Commonwealth and the world.
Although perhaps best remembered now for the short public information films, particularly from the 1970s, the COI's huge range of films had different purposes, for instance some were aimed at specialist audiences and others were made to promote Britain abroad.
Reflecting that, this 2-disc Blu-ray collection, released by the BFI on 20 April 2020, brings together many of the COI's most loved (and in some cases feared) and most interesting productions from 1944 - 1981 which are now preserved in the BFI National Archive. Among them are Design for Today, Apaches, Lonely Water and Charley's March of Time along with two previously unreleased COI classics, Smoking and You and Waverley Steps.
Special features are four public information 'fillers', short but hard-hitting films designed to shock, including the chilling, iconic AIDS: Iceberg (1987), directed by Nic Roeg with music by Brian Eno.
Other renowned directors that passed through the portals of the COI include luminaries of the British documentary movement such as Paul Rotha, Humphrey Jennings and Lindsay Anderson and in later years the likes of Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire) and Peter Greenaway (The Draughtsman's Contract).
