PICTURING A NATION IN WARTIME: THE FILMS OF HUMPHREY JENNINGS

PROGRAM 2:

1943, 80 minutes, 35mm.

“FIRES WERE STARTED is a story of one particular unit of the National Fire Service during one particular day and night in the middle of the London blitz. In outline it is the simplest of pictures; in treatment it is of the greatest subtlety, richly poetic in feeling, intense with tenderness and admiration for the unassuming heroes whom it honors… No other British film made during the war, documentary or feature, achieved such a continuous and poignant truthfulness, or treated the subject of men at war with such a sense of its incidental glories and its essential tragedy.” –Lindsay Anderson, HUMPHREY JENNINGS: FILM-MAKER, PAINTER, POET