Hull-born KAY MANDER has been a film maker all her life. She has worked on many well-known feature films, such as "Tommy", "Where Eagles Dare", "From Russia with Love" and "Fahrenheit 451", but she began as a director of documentary films during the last war. It is this formative period of her career which is the focus of this revealing programme which pays tribute to the achievements and aspirations of the wartime documentary film makers, whose...

Hull-born KAY MANDER has been a film maker all her life. She has worked on many well-known feature films, such as "Tommy", "Where Eagles Dare", "From Russia with Love" and "Fahrenheit 451", but she began as a director of documentary films during the last war. It is this formative period of her career which is the focus of this revealing programme which pays tribute to the achievements and aspirations of the wartime documentary film makers, whose prolific output was seen by millions. For Kay Mander and the group producing films for the Ministry of Information, the war provided an invaluable learning ground. They turned out films in their thousands and with an extraordinary range of subject matter, whether they taught people how to rescue bomb victims, how to cook cabbage properly, or how not to spread colds through indiscriminate sneezing. The films were shown across Britain - in cinemas, schools, factories and military bases. As well as providing information on practical subjects, the films also considered the post-war peace and dealt with social subjects - better housing, inner city poverty, and town planning. As is pointed out by Kay and her many colleagues reunited for this programme, there was a humanist or socialist them to many documentaries that looked to a happier future for post-war Britain and its ordinary working people.