Paul Rotha

Paul Rotha 3 June 1907 7 March 1984 was an English documentary filmmaker film historian and critic He was born Paul Thompson in London and educated at Highgate School and at the Slade School of Fine Art Rotha was a close collaborator of John Grierson and Wolfgang Suschitzky was one of his cinematographers He directed and produced dozens of documentaries including Contact 1933 Air Outpost 1937 The Face of Britain 1935 World of Plenty 1943 Land of Promise 1947 A City Speaks 1947 and many others The World Is Rich 1947 and Cradle of Genius 1961 both of which were nominated for an Academy Award and feature films including the BAFTAnominated No Resting Place Rotha was Head of BBC TVs Documentaries Department between May 1953 and May 1955 Rotha shared with Otto Neurath an interest in the techniques of visual communication and the two men worked together on several films where Neuraths ISOTYPE pictorial statistics were animated as an important component of the films arguments He was initially a major opponent of sound in movies although he later developed the technique of multivoice commentary in which the argument of the film is conveyed via discussion between several distinct voices a distinctive form of documentary exposition Films using this technique include New Worlds for Old 1938 World of Plenty 1943 The World is Rich 1947 and Land of Promise 1946 Rotha wrote produced and directed the 1958 crime drama Cat Mouse based on a novel by John Creasey and starring Lee Patterson and Ann Sears