Films and Filming, 1964–74

We’ve been working through a run of Films and Filming recently. This was a monthly magazine which concentrated on reviews of films, reports from sets, and articles on film-making and personalities within the industry. Our run starts in 1964 and stops at 1974, and adds to a scattered run that we already had. This is really useful for filling gaps and for then product filing the adverts in the duplicates.

Films and Filming started in 1954 and ran, with a short break, up to 1990. It coincided with Sight and Sound, the BFI’s magazine, the latter still in print today. 

Our magazines are heavy on editorial, particularly for the 1960s, but as the magazine got thicker into the 1970s the advertising content seems to proportionately increase. The adverts are for film festivals, specialist film print suppliers, film companies, specific films and occasionally for non-film-specific brands such as airlines, alcohol and so on. We’ve included a few examples here. Sometimes the adverts for films are double-pagers: Hammer, for instance, had the centre-fold for June 1969 to promote their films ‘Moon Zero Two’ and ‘When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth’, using artists for the imagery. The cynic might say it was remarkable how women in skimpy bikinis could feature so prominently in the promotion of films about dinosaurs and space travel. Very much of their time…