The Screen of Change: Lives Made Over by the Moving Image

The account of a life spanning almost sixty years of work in the film industry in England, Hollywood, India, and throughout the world. Peter Hopkinson joined Denham Studios as a clapper loader at 16 and quickly became a camera assistant, working with directors like King Vidor and Michael Powell, and stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Robert Donat. In 1940 he joined the army and, working for the British Army Film and Photographic Unit, helped to film the Battle of Alamein, allied landings in Italy, partisan actions in Yugoslavia and Greece and the Japanese surrender in Siam (Thailand), among many other assignments. After the war he became a director-cameraman, mainly for the March of Time newsreels, continuing to film from war zones and trouble spots, but also creating documentaries (many of them award-winning) that analysed life in peacetime: politics, scientific advance, social upheaval in the developing world and changing lifestyles at home. In later life he was hired by UNESCO to pass on his mastery of documentary film-making to a new generation of international youth at the Film Institute of India. In this book Peter Hopkinson presents not just an account of his own amazing life and work but a lucid and comprehensive history of the moving image itself, the supreme popular art form of our time. Includes more than 100 photographs. 'A history of the moving image told from the perspective of somebody who has experienced many of the major developments in the industry at first hand.' Melvyn Bragg (Controller Arts, London Weekend Television) "A real contribution to the literature of film in the 20th century." Raymond Fielding (Dean and Professor School of Motion Picture Television and Recording Arts Florida State University)