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DetailsOriginal Format: 35mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Sound Duration: 9 mins 57 secs Credits: India Command
Produced by Services Film Centre India
For the Directorate of Welfare and Amenities
Subject: Wartime
Summary Calling Blighty is a series of 12 minute films which were made between 1944 and 1946. Of the 391 issues made, only 64 are now known to survive. The films feature servicemen, and a few servicewomen, who were stationed in the Far East, recording a message to be screened for friends and family at local cinemas back in the UK.
Description
Calling Blighty is a series of 12 minute films which were made between 1944 and 1946. Of the 391 issues made, only 64 are now known to survive. The films feature servicemen, and a few servicewomen, who were stationed in the Far East, recording a message to be screened for friends and family at local cinemas back in the UK.
Opening Titles:
India Command Presents
Calling Blighty
Produced by Services Film Centre India
For the Directorate of Welfare and Amenities
A group of servicemen from...
Calling Blighty is a series of 12 minute films which were made between 1944 and 1946. Of the 391 issues made, only 64 are now known to survive. The films feature servicemen, and a few servicewomen, who were stationed in the Far East, recording a message to be screened for friends and family at local cinemas back in the UK.
Opening Titles:
India Command Presents
Calling Blighty
Produced by Services Film Centre India
For the Directorate of Welfare and Amenities
A group of servicemen from York, Leeds and Doncaster (and other parts of South Yorkshire) are filmed together in a jungle clearing. The men stay seated in the background in front of huts as each man takes his turn to come forward to the camera to send a personal message home to his loved ones. After the individual messages have been delivered, the Sergeant Major leads them into a chorus or two of “On Ilkley Moor bar tat” to finish.
Title – The End
Further information can be found at the NWFA “A Message Home” http://www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk/blighty/index.php
Context Filmed direct to camera and often in only one take, the messages are mostly stiff upper lip testimonies, sometimes funny, occasionally emotional, and very moving. These compelling films provide a unique window to the past to help audiences understand the courage of servicemen who had endured the long separation from their home often since the start of the war. The films all end with the soldiers singing a song to camera, and in typical Yorkshire form, the men offer up a rousing rendition of On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at.
