As part of the film season Documentary Centenary: A New Look at British Documentary at BFI Southbank in London this September, there are several programmes that highlight the history of science, technology and medicine:

_Films of Fact: Science _
Mon 24 Sep 18.10 NFT3

Technology was an enduring theme for documentarists, who joined up with scientists committed to public communication. Science in the cinema was associated with the whimsical natural history of The Secrets of Nature, sampled here. But, with the establishment of the GPO Unit, documentarists got in on the act, making films promoting the wonders of a world transformed by technology. Anstey’s nutrition film Enough to Eat? (1936) introduced the socially-concerned scientist offering technical solutions to social problems. This approach peaked with Rotha’s forceful 1943 masterpiece, World of Plenty, made with the nutrition scientist John Boyd Orr.