This is a reissue, but an important one, especially considering that the film industry’s gender inequalities are as entrenched as ever. Kay Mander’s cinematic career began in the mid 1930s when she became a publicist for Alexander Korda. She joined the Shell Film Unit in 1940 as a production assistant, directing her first documentary in 1941. It’s included here: How to File is a still watchable seven-minute training film aimed at metalwork apprentices. Mander’s unfussy, fluent style makes it a pleasure to watch. We get three longer shorts aimed at fire service and civil defence workers. Each one visually inventive and historically fascinating, one of them using the same stock footage used by Humphrey Jennings in his Fires Were Started.
Mander’s political sympathies (she was a member of the Communist Party) are more overtly expressed in 1943’s Highland Doctor, an enchanting docudrama extolling the benefits of state healthcare in an isolated rural community. There’s a striking moment when one of the Scottish doctors proclaims that “there is a great future for subsidised medical services.” New Builders (1944) sponsored by the Ministry of Information, highlights the importance of skilled vocational education (including a delightful student voiceover) and the urgent need to build more homes. Poor housing conditions are discussed in Homes for the People (1945), featuring five articulate working-class women in locations ranging from an inner-London estate to a Welsh mining village. Mander’s concerns are still relevant.
So why haven’t we heard of her? Some of the answers are contained in Adele Carroll’s 2001 documentary One Continuous Take, which features the octogenarian Mander in sparkling form, revisiting old London haunts and chatting with former colleagues. She recalls Ealing’s Michael Balcon telling her in 1949 that film direction was “a job that women couldn’t handle”, and she drifted into work as a continuity assistant as her directorial assignments dried up. Mander became close to the likes of Kirk Douglas and François Truffaut, and she assisted Terence Young on From Russia With Love. She continued working until the late 1980s, retiring to rural Scotland until her death in 2013. Panamint’s two-disc set is a handsome, belated tribute. Image, sound and documentation are flawless.
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