This film is part of Free

Tomorrow's Today

This is a picture that paints a picture, in appealing colour, of the life and times of the children of late '50s London.

Animation & Artists Moving Image 1958 15 mins

Overview

This intriguing and unusual short exemplifies the BFI Experimental Film Fund’s support for the solo amateur filmmaker with creative and career ambitions. Director-photographer Henry Lewes' film studies a mural of local street life by 11-15-year-old schoolboys, using it as a basis for musings on the area, and the society, in which they’re growing up, via location footage and a thoughtful, if slightly pompous, narration. The school and the district are unnamed – if you can identify them let us know!

Lewes' patient layering of close and longer shots of the mural, and his many considered camera movements, prefigure the style of art-themed TV programmes. Evidently using this piece as a springboard, Lewes went on to a worthy but unsung career as a director of both sponsored documentaries and factual TV. Interestingly, the themes of Tomorrow’s Today - childhood and fine art - are recurring threads among these later films. See, for instance, Lewes' fine 1961 film Eyes of a Child, also available on BFI Player.