Public Information Films Collection

The BFI's recently launched collection of Public Information Films provides revealing and, at times, startling insights into how successive governments have used the medium of the moving image to inform and persuade:

"Films which aim to influence the public to cycle carefully, to kill flies, to avoid hazards in the home, to improve typing technique or learn how to talk effectively on the telephone (whether within the civil service or shopping a paramilitary in Troubles-era Northern Ireland), all offer a rare insight into how Britons really lived in the last century."

The full collection can be explored for free.

Or, by way of introduction, why not check out the  '12 to try', a selection of some of the most unusal and unforgettable of these films, handpicked for you by BFI curators.