This film is part of Free

Eye to the Future

A new recruit drives off into a chemical sunset and a future with ICI Wilton but first theres some serious business with an analogue computer.

Industry sponsored film 1961 24 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for North East Film Archive

Overview

A new recruit gets a marvellous glimpse at the weird impersonal plants filling the Teesside skyline at ICI Wilton. This slick piece of sponsored filmmaking is a product of post-war efforts to attract young engineering graduates into Imperial Chemical Industries. Lest the restless youth find supersonic wind tunnels and analogue computers dull, tiddly winks and cool jazz in a cellar beckon.

The production of the ICI Film Unit, formed in 1929, mirrored the needs of government propaganda in this 1961 recruitment film, as ICI Wilton chemical was built in 1946 to help in Britains great reconstruction drive after World War Two. The use of tracking shots gives a suitably apocalyptic sense of the colossal chemical plants built between Redcar and Eston.