'Nothing Similar in England': the Scottish Film Council, The Scottish Education Department and the utility of 'educational film' to Scotland

Abstract

Nothing Similar in England': the Scottish Film Council, the Scottish Education Department and the utility of 'educational film' to Scotland analyses the work educational film performed for Scotland from the 1930s to the 1950s. The Scottish Film Council (SFC) was constituted in 1934 as both a cultural and an educational institution. Using a binocular lens that links media and education policy in Scotland, therefore, the chapter explores the double utility of educational film as a cultural practice and process enacted in the everyday politics of space and place. Scottish institutional advocacy for the educational work of film helped sustain a precarious filmmaking community in Scotland and the production of educational film promoted the distinctiveness of Scottish civic identity and a cultural rationale for devolution thus.