Rare Humphrey Jennings short on Youtube - English Harvest

[Penfold]

I fell in love with this short film when I first saw it years ago in the bowels of the BFI, raved about it, as you do, but could find it nowhere. And now the BFI have put it on youtube via their own channel....fabulous.
If you know the work of Humphrey Jennings you won't need me to tell you of his wartime films, black and white elegies to the British people, and the British landscape. English Harvest is a bit different....its certainly elegaic, but it's pre-war, and filmed in Dufaycolour. This, my friends, is how my grandparents spent their summers before the war...breaking their backs in farmers' fields. But it looks so beautiful, and this way of farming would be gone just two years later, with the industrialisation of agriculture that war needs brought. Enjoy the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcyzAIkM ... 0649909.72