Abstract
This chapter examines the new spaces created by the expansion of the aviation industry in the 1920s and ’30s and argues that the production of ‘airspace’ was central to a new age of British modernity, identity and industry. Airspace, as discussed in this chapter, entailed not just the space above the earth where airplanes could travel, but also the spaces that the aviation industry required and inspired. At the same time these spaces were expanding, two new forms of film-making were also increasing in popularity: documentary and amateur film. This chapter uses these films to examine the production of airspace and consider how these technologies of expansion—cinema and aviation—helped to construct an expansive, modern, mobile image of Britain.
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Filmography
Across England in an Aeroplane. Dir. Claude Friese-Greene, 1919.
Aerial Pictures of Selo Photographic Film Factory. Dir. Unknown, 1932. East Anglia Film Archive.
Air Outpost. Dir. Paul Rotha, 1937. Strand Film.
Air Post. Dir. Geoffrey Clark, 1934. GPO Film Unit.
Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus Display. Dir. Unknown, 1932. East Anglia Film Archive.
Croydon Aerodrome. Dir. Moses Nightingale, 1932. Screen Archive South East.
Croydon Beautiful. Dir. A.G. Hinchliff, 1937. Screen Archive South East.
Egypt and Back with Imperial Airways. Dir. Ruth Stuart, 1931–33. East Anglia Film Archive.
Flying 1 and 2. Dir. C.H. Wood, 1928–33. Yorkshire Film Archive.
[Picnic]. Dir. C. Ernest Shippam, 1931. Screen Archive South East.
The Future’s in the Air. Dir. Paul Rotha, 1937. Strand Film.
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McCluskey, M. (2020). Entering British Airspace: Aviation and Film. In: McCluskey, M., Seaber, L. (eds) Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain. Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60555-1_4
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