The 1920s and 1930s can seem impossibly long ago, with day-to-day urban life back then a world away from our own. Fewer and fewer of us still have living relatives who can testify to the social and economic conditions of the time. Luckily, many cine films survive in archives, and they can help to bring this period back to life.

The documentary film movement that blossomed in the interwar years brought ordinary people’s experiences into sharper focus. It grew as an offshoot of the cine film industry, which was expanding to feed the public’s hunger for watching movies – but documentary films could give a more realistic, less glamorised view of everyday life. This was a time of many privations: meagre food, daily drudgery, no modern conveniences such as washing machines, and no National Health Service. Children died suddenly from catastrophic but preventable illnesses such as diphtheria.

This exhibition gives a welcome public airing for films made by Bermondsey Borough Council’s Public Health Department from the 1920s onwards. The films were widely and repeatedly shown around Bermondsey and Southwark (in south-east London) for decades. They helped the council to achieve its aims of improving the health and wellbeing of the voting population, by giving them access to good-quality information so that they could make well-informed decisions about their health.

Before World War II, the films were screened for free in the open air on the streets and open spaces throughout the borough. The council customised a set of ordinary vans to become ‘cinemotors’, giving a portable means of projection, and modified a number of lampposts so that electricity could be diverted to the vans. They were also realistic about how the films would be received: while expecting quiet as a screening was introduced, they accepted argument, debate and comments during the film itself. Unsurprisingly, the films were very popular with children, who would cheer at each slide and attract the notice of passers-by.

By 1938 there were a total of 33 films on the catalogue, about 20 of which were made directly by the council. It produced its own because hiring films was prohibitively expensive and because many such films were made by people with no medical expertise. This was compounded by the fact that “the would-be purchaser can seldom get a private view of the film before buying, and naturally is averse to buying a ‘pig in a poke’,” as the Better than Cure manifesto put it (see below). The films were black and white, shot semi-professionally with no sound. Audio became more common in cinema films from the 1930s onwards, although educational films still tended to be silent with written intertitles or captions, because of this style’s similarity to simple textbooks.

There was no precedent for this kind of direct health propaganda activity at the time. This reforming vision came from husband and wife Alfred and Ada Salter, long-term residents of the borough; in 1922, Alfred became MP for Bermondsey and Ada the Mayor (the first female Mayor London had ever seen). Under their influence, Dr D M Connan, who had immediate responsibility for public health in Bermondsey, was given a clear mission. A manifesto on health propaganda, Better than Cure, set out in 1927 a programme of public health propaganda activities for the borough (the word ‘propaganda’ had not yet gained its pejorative sense). The manifesto identified the importance of using visual imagery to appeal to their citizens; in this “age of enlightenment”, film was the most modern technological medium for communication. Advertising, described as “the cult of brevity”, was also visual and much admired by the Public Health Department. The films, along with illuminated ‘propaganda tables’, electric signs flashing warnings, leaflets and pamphlets, were very popular and successfully combined elements from different genres.