The Island. Peter Pickering, 1952.
😸
Edition screened: Included in the BFI 4-DVD set Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 25 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
An overly-long PR piece for British Petroleum, struggling to convince the people that it is a grand and wonderful thing for a beautiful wetlands area to be backfilled and paved to create a refinery. The writers load up the piece with Old Britannia’s flowery language and tales of the nostalgic past, narrated over a backdrop of construction equipment destroying everything for a New and Wonderful Tomorrow. I think ‘contemptible fuckers’ is the phrase.
The 😸 is begrudgingly awarded since, of course, BP forgets to show the uncountable thousands of animals that died horrible deaths under construction vehicle wheels, from having their homes flooded with toxic runoff, and just for the hell of it.