Newsreel
A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, information, and entertainment for millions of moviegoers. Newsreels were typically exhibited preceding a feature film, but there were also dedicated newsreel theaters in many major cities in the 1930s and ’40s, and some large city cinemas also included a smaller theaterette where newsreels were screened continuously throughout the day. By the end of the 1960s television news broadcasts had supplanted  the format. Newsreels are considered significant historical documents, since they are often the only audiovisual record of certain cultural events. History. Silent news films were shown in cinemas from the late 19th century. In 1909 Pathé started producing weekly newsreels in Europe. Pathé began producing newsreels for the UK in 1910 and the US in 1911. Newsreels were a staple of the typical North American, British, and Commonwealth countries (especially Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), and throughout European cinema programming schedule from the silent era until the 1960s when television news broadcasting completely supplanted its role. The National Film and  Sound Archive in Australia holds the Cinesound Movietone Australian Newsreel Collection, a comprehensive collection of 4,000 newsreel films and documentaries representing news stories covering all major events. The first official British news cinema that only showed newsreels was the "Daily Bioscope" that opened in London on May 23, 1909. In 1929, William Fox purchased a former cinema called the Embassy. He changed the format from a $2 show twice a day to a continuous 25-cent programme, establishing the first newsreel theater in the United States; the idea was such a success that Fox and his backers announced they  would start a chain of newsreel theaters across the country. The newsreels were often accompanied by cartoons or short subjects. The First World War saw the major countries using the newest technologies to develop propaganda for home audiences. Each used carefully edited newsreels to combine straight news reports and propaganda. In some countries, newsreels generally used music as a background for usually silent on-site film footage. In some countries, the narrator used humorous remarks for light-hearted or non-tragic stories. In the U.S., newsreel series included "The March of Time" (1935–1951), "Pathé News" (1910–1956), "Paramount News" (1927–1957), "Fox  Movietone News" (1928–1963), "Hearst Metrotone News" (1914–1967), and "Universal Newsreel" (1929–1967). Pathé News was distributed by RKO Radio Pictures from 1931 to 1947, and then by Warner Brothers from 1947 to 1956. An example of a newsreel story can be found in the film "Citizen Kane" (1941), which was prepared by RKO's actual newsreel staff. "Citizen Kane" includes a fictional newsreel called "News on the March" that summarizes the life of title character Charles Foster Kane while parodying "The March of Time". On August 12, 1949, one hundred twenty cinema technicians employed by Associated British Pathé in London went  on strike to protest the dismissal of fifteen men on the grounds of redundancy while conciliation under trade union agreements was pending. Their strike lasted through to at least Tuesday August 16, the Tuesday being the last day for production on new newsreels shown on the Thursday. Events of the strike resulted in over three hundred cinemas across Britain having to go without newsreels that week. Effect of television. On February 16, 1948, NBC launched a ten-minute television program called "Camel Newsreel Theatre" with John Cameron Swayze that featured newsreels with Swayze doing voiceovers. Also in 1948, the DuMont  Television Network launched two short-lived newsreel series, "Camera Headlines" and "I.N.S. Telenews", the latter in cooperation with Hearst's International News Service. On August 15, 1948, CBS started their evening television news program "Douglas Edwards and the News". Later the NBC, CBS, and ABC(USA) news shows all produced their own news film. Newsreel cinemas either closed or went to showing continuous programmes of cartoons and short subjects, such as the London Victoria Station News Cinema, later Cartoon Cinema that opened in 1933 and closed in 1981. In New Zealand, the "Weekly Review" was "the principal film series produced in  the 1940s". The first television news broadcasts in the country, incorporating newsreel footage, began in 1960. The last American newsreel was released on December 26, 1967, the day after Christmas. Newsreels died out because technological advances such as electronic news-gathering for television news, introduced in the 1970s, rendered them obsolete. Nonetheless, some countries such as Cuba, Japan, Spain, and Italy continued producing newsreels into the 1980s and 1990s. Newsreel-producing companies excluded television companies from their distribution, but the television companies countered by sending their own camera crews to film news events. Retrospectives. A 1978 Australian film titled "Newsfront