Air Outpost (1937)

Sharjah airport in the 1930's showing the airport, town, Emirate and Imperial Airways staff. An early British documentary produced by many pioneers of the medium.

Date of release
1937-01-23
Runtime
15m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Ralph Keene, John Taylor

Casting

Interesting facts

Air Outpost is a 1937 film produced by documentary maker Paul Rotha focusing on the Imperial Airways 'Empire Route' and highlighting a day at the aerodrome at Sharjah, then one of the Trucial States and now one of the United Arab Emirates. The film was made by Rotha for Strand Films and was one of three commissioned by Imperial Airways to showcase the Empire Route and highlight its efficiency and safety for passengers.

Production and direction

Air Outpost is credited to Paul Rotha for production, John Taylor for direction and photography and Ralph Keene for direction and editing. The film's score was composed by distinguished British composer William Alwyn. Alwyn's orientalist music for Air Outpost has been compared to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.The film tells the story of Sharjah Airport, showing preparations for the landing of the Handley Page HP 42 aircraft 'Hanno'.

Although there is no confirmation that the script for Air Outpost was written by British novelist Graham Greene (Greene worked on The Future's in the Air), parallels have been drawn between the style of Greene's work on the sister film and the 'clipped prose' in the script of Air Outpost itself.

Copies of Air Outpost were among a collection of 13 British documentary films acquired by the film library of New Yorks' MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art, in 1939.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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