Paul Rotha

Biography

Paul Rotha (3 June 1907 – 7 March 1984) was an English documentary film-maker, 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 BAFTA-nominated No Resting Place. Rotha was Head of BBC TV's 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 Neurath's 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 multi-voice commentary, in which the argument of the film is conveyed vi…

Directed

1. Shipyard (1935) — Director
2. Cat & Mouse (1958) — Director
3. The Life of Adolf Hitler (1961) — Director
4. The Silent Raid (1962) — Director
5. No Resting Place (1951) — Director
6. The Face of Britain (1935) — Director
7. The World Is Rich (1946) — Director
8. Total War in Britain (1945) — Director
9. Land of Promise (1946) — Director
10. Island People (1940) — Director
11. Cradle of Genius (1960) — Director
12. Australian Wines (1931) — Director
13. People of Britain (1936) — Director
14. The Balance (1947) — Director
15. A City Speaks (1947) — Director
16. World of Plenty (1943) — Director
17. World Without End (1953) — Director
18. Contact (1933) — Director