Focus On Film is a jointly funded project by The National Archives and the South East Grid for Learning. This site presents film as a historical source and considers its advantages and disadvantages as evidence for the past.
Introduction: This article outlines with film clips, some of the issues relating to film as evidence.
Activities: These investigate different aspects of film evidence with clips. The activities can be accessed either for individual use on a pc or for whole-class teaching using an interactive whiteboard.
Film Archive: The archive contains a range of original footage from the twentieth century as well as some reconstructions of earlier periods of history. All clips have full background information and can either be viewed online or downloaded for free.
Editor′s Room: You can understand the power of the film editor by working with our film archive and online editing tool.
Sources used: film, typed document, photo, hand written document
This gallery considers what was the most important factor affecting crime in the 20th century through four case studies on: car crime; smuggling; young people; crime figures.
This gallery considers if police work changed dramatically in the 20th century with two case studies: one on police work and new technology; another on public attitudes to the police.
This gallery considers the purpose of 20th century punishments through three case studies on: punishment of young offenders; prisons in the 20th century; abolition of capital punishment.
Moving Here explores, records and illustrates why people came to England over the last 200 years and what their experiences were and continue to be. It includes an online archive of original material related to migration history from local, regional and national archives, libraries and museums and gives visitors to the site the opportunity to publish stories of their own experience of migration. The site features numerous resources designed specifically for schools.
