A crane swings over a dockyard on Clydeside and a rousingly scored sequence illustrates some of the great ships that have been built and launched around the city of Glasgow over recent years. It was here that the famous "Cutty Sark" was built in the Victorian era. Cargo ships, warships, liners, tugs - you name it and their types have been made here since. The designers draw and calculate how the ship will function. It's almost as if it were a 3D jigsaw puzzle, based on the architect's paper-based template. Those designs are then tested in tanks that can simulate benign - and less - sea conditions. Next, the steel plates are prepared and mangled before the welding, bolting and construction begins. These industrial processes are demonstrated with riveting machines and rollers forcing the metal into it's curved and moulded shapes. The prefabrication sheds do most of the preparatory work building the sections - sometimes 30 tons - before they emerge to be assembled, piece by gigantic piece. Some gentle banter from the workers gives an indication of the tough work and community spirit that thrived amongst the skilled characters who worked the metal amidst a constant racket that would have driven most folk to distraction long since. The day of launch arrives and what was inanimate is given a final dab of paint and then the champagne and the screaming chains. "British Trust" is born but she has still to be fitted, plumbed, wired and given an engine. Finally, under her own power another recently constructed ship "Regent Eagle" is tugged into the open water. I wonder what ever happened to that?
Promotes television sets and the broadcast of New York's first regularly scheduled programs by providing a clinical look at the inner workings of television, including the manufacture of the tubes, lab experiments, and an actual telecast. Shows RCA's production studios in Rockefeller Center, television demonstrations at the 1939–40 New York World's Fair, RCA's Empire State Building transmitter, and remote mobile broadcast units. One of a variety of "Reelisms" shorts produced by Frederic Ullman Jr. and Frank Donovan for RKO in the late 1930s.
This short film from 1946 presents an outline of the fur trade's history and the commercial use of fur in Canada. A thirst for fur by the kings and courts of the Old World positioned the fur trade as part of the country's industrial economy. Fur farming and conservation became increasingly important, although the lonely life of the trapper remained the same. This film offers a view of both.
This French-Canadian co-production goes behind the scenes of the huge tobacco industry, whose economic power has been expanding for five decades at the expense of public health. A gripping investigation covering three continents, Nadia Collot's film exposes the vast conspiracy of a criminally negligent industry that conquers new markets through corruption and manipulation. To confront the tobacco cartel, anti-smoking groups are organizing and scoring points, but the fight remains fierce. With ist diverse viewpoints, shocking interviews and riveting images, The Tobacco Conspiracy deftly defines the issues in a complex situation where private interests and the public good collide. Enlightening and engrossing, this documentary is a hard-hitting critique of an industry gone mad.
A film about fireworks, the people who make them and the cultures behind them across the globe.
Examines the mesmerising construction of clear crystal glass pieces created by the craftsmen of Waterford. The process from the intense heat of the furnace to glass blowing, shaping, cutting, honing, filling and finishing is all depicted in this celebration of the art of creation of Waterford Glass. Academy Award Nominee: Best Live Action Short - 1976.
Film sponsored by the Troy, New York–based manufacturer of Arrow shirts to explain its reasons for moving its business down south. The true story of how two World War II veterans invited the company to occupy an industrial plant that they had built in the hope of revitalizing Buchanan, Georgia. Five hundred residents signed a pledge stating that they were willing to work in the new factory. Cluett, Peabody & Co. eventually employed one-third of the townspeople.
The video is accompanied by a richly detailed article that adds more depth to the documentary. If there’s any question about why Hollywood is dead set against the unionization of vfx artists, the following graphic from the article will answer the question: vfx artists comprise the biggest portion of the crew on most Hollywood blockbusters.
Unconventional portrayal of mining in the Swedish Lapland ore fields, a powerful image and sound symphony that can be experienced both as a documentary and symbolic work.
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.
Documentary examining the steel industry in Youngstown, Ohio during World War II. Focuses on steel production, including the smelting process, slagging and the blast furnace. Workers reflect upon their lives and the importance of their jobs. Emphasizes the importance of teamwork in the mills and on the plant's labor relations committee to help win the war. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
Created in the Victorian era to widen the mouth of the River Tees for shipping, South Gare is a man-made peninsula extending four kilometres into the cold North Sea. Today, the industry it was built for has gone, but the Gare remains as a haven for all sorts of unexpected communities - kite-surfers, photographers, bird-watchers, scuba-divers and the people who simply appreciate its strange, lonely beauty.