The British Pathe Archive
Newsreel archivist British Pathé has uploaded their entire 85,000 film archive to YouTube. This is an amazing resource.
British Pathé was once a dominant feature of the British cinema experience, renowned for first-class reporting and an informative yet uniquely entertaining style. It is now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in existence. Spanning the years from 1896 to 1976, the collection includes footage — not only from Britain, but from around the globe — of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, sport and culture. The archive is particularly strong in its coverage of the First and Second World Wars.
I’ve shared videos from British Pathé before: the Hindenberg disaster and this bizarre film of a little boy being taunted with chocolate. The archive is chock full of gems: a 19-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger at a bodybuilding competition, footage of and interviews with survivors of the Titanic, video of the world’s tallest man (8’11”), and the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. And this film from 1956 showing how cricket balls are made by hand:
Discussion comments
Hello! In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.
Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!
In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. Check out your options for renewal.
This is the name that'll be displayed next to comments you make on kottke.org; your email will not be displayed publicly. I'd encourage you to use your real name (or at least your first name and last initial) but you can also pick something that you go by when you participate in communities online. Choose something durable and reasonably unique (not "Me" or "anon"). Please don't change this often. No impersonation..
Note: I'm letting folks change their display names because the membership service that kottke.org uses collects full names and I thought some people might not want their names displayed publicly here. If it gets abused, I might disable this feature.
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
This thread is closed for new comments & replies. Thanks to everyone for participating!