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The Thirties are brought to life in this new series for BBC Four
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The Thirties In Colour
Wednesday 16 July on BBC FOUR
 Programme copy
So much is known about the Forties and the Second World War that the Thirties are often forgotten. Yet it was a pivotal decade that saw not only a world-wide financial meltdown and great political upheaval, but also the march towards the modern-day society and the invention of technologies that are taken for granted today.
It was also a period that erupted in colour as polychromatic photographic technologies came of age. For the first time, wealthy amateur film-makers could capture the world in authentic colours that really depicted what they saw around them.
The Thirties In Colour, a new four-part series for BBC Four, draws upon the world's treasuries of extremely rare colour documentary films – many of which are from private archives and have never been seen before on television – to bring powerful, poignant and often surprising insights into this crucial decade in world history.
David Okuefuna was the BBC executive who had the mind-boggling task of researching and producing the series. Programme Information caught up with him to find out what it was like to work on such a landmark project.
What motivated you to
make the series?
"I was the executive producer of the series The Edwardians In Colour..., The Great War In Colour... and The Twenties in Colour – The Wonderful World Of Albert Kahn, which were broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Four between April 2007 and March 2008. These series were very well received by audiences, and having seen such a positive response, it was natural for us to follow up that success with another series that would track down rare colour pictures to tell the story of an age which has mainly been represented on TV through monochrome images."
How hard was it to track
down such amazing archive material?
"Unlike our earlier series, which relies overwhelmingly on still colour photographs from one source – the Albert Kahn Archives in France – The Thirties In Colour features colour cine film footage derived from a variety of sources. After making contact with most of the world's major film archives, it was apparent that colour documentary film from the Thirties is very scarce indeed. Several archive houses that we regularly use had no colour film from this period whatsoever. As a consequence, we had to cast our net much wider than we normally would. We undertook intensive original research and followed leads given to us by amateur film enthusiasts and experts in history documentary from all over the world. Importantly, we trusted our own instincts, and made speculative approaches to some institutions which were uncertain what was in their collection. As a result, we managed to unearth some hidden treasures – including the remarkable collection of colour films owned by Harry Wright."
How long did it take
to sort through all the material you gathered?
"Tracking down this material is just one part of the challenge. In many cases, the reels of film are so fragile that they required special handling before the images they contained could be transferred onto a tape format that would make it possible to view, edit and broadcast. So, all in all, it took about four months before this material was accessible to the production team."
Tell us a little about the people who took the footage?
"Because colour film processes were so expensive to use, most of the people who shot the material which features in the series were very wealthy. That is certainly true of the British film-maker Rosie Newman, who was the daughter of a very successful banker, and of the industrialist Harry Wright, who was a steel magnate. Several of the films were shot by Americans, including Chicago-based paediatrician Benjamin Gasul, who shot some remarkable colour images of the Jewish Quarter in Warsaw just months before the country was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1939; and New York-based lawyer David Glick, who shot colour film of German Jews who had escaped persecution by the Nazis by emigrating to South America."
What do you think stands
out about the Thirties?
"The Thirties was an extraordinarily important and pivotal phase in world history. Just weeks before the new decade began, the Wall Street Crash of November 1929 propelled the world into the great global Depression, which left millions of people in the northern hemisphere out of work; and just weeks before the decade came to a close, the invasion of Poland catapulted the nations of Europe into what would become the bloodiest war in history.
"In between, the decade saw fascism reach its high water mark, and many conflicts around the world, including the Spanish Civil War; the challenge to British colonial rule in India led by Gandhi; the crisis that followed the abdication of the British Monarch, King Edward VIII; and numerous important breakthroughs in science and technology – including, of course, the refinement of the technologies required to shoot colour film."
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