Kay Mander

Kay Mander kept training and social issues to the fore in the 1940s with her innovative documentaries. Mander, now living in Kirkcudbrightshire, recalls her life and work, with clips from many of her films.

A short feature aimed at British schoolboys in 1944 encouraging them to register for apprenticeships in the building trade.

A British documentary on tunneling if a building falls in ruins.

Captures life in rural Oxfordshire in the mid-1940s.

Listen up, apprentices! Learn how to smooth and shape metal – an important wartime skill.

Industrial and social progress in post-war Europe.

British documentary on the use of Penicillin.

Commissioned to make a film about a pilot health scheme in the Highlands and Islands, Mander decided against a straightforward documentary approach, recording doctors and nurses going about their work, and instead wrote her own storyline about a medical emergency and recruited actors to play it out.

A documentary on the housing problems of Great Britain following WWII

Documentary on town planning in which an architect looks at the history of Dunfermline, Scotland and its possible future development.

Documentary on town planning in which an architect looks at the history of Dunfermline, Scotland and its possible future development.

A Canadian boy visits cousins in Scotland; his attitude first causes antagonism with Scottish youngsters, but disappears when the lad proves himself by riding a horse over dangerous country to bring aid to an injured shepherd.

Directed by innovative British filmmaker Kay Mander, this is a curiosity for devotees of public information films. School children act out new ideas for post-war education and investigate hidden histories near home, exploring industries, farms and Roman ruins around Bishop Auckland, then present an exhibition for local folk. Actuality footage of Wilsons Forge (closed in 1997) serves today as an elegy for one of the lost traditional industries in North East England.

Documentary on the young builders who'll rebuild Britain after the war.

A Saturday morning for a family in a London suburb. An English language teaching aid for the Linguaphone Institute, presumably distributed abroad and for screenings in schools and in English as a Second Language classes.

Story of a little Javanese boy who adopts a monkey.