The Falling director escapes to a world gone by in eccentric yet bittersweet archival films, while her
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Lockdown has sent me backwards in time. I’m experiencing a vicarious nostalgia, a longing to see just how much the past was a foreign country, and how differently things were done. I’ve been cruising the many free titles on BFI Player. These include the public information films A-tish-oo (1941), a short wartime guide to preventing germs from “direct, projective infection” and How to Use the Telephone (1948), a lengthy film made up of dramatic reconstructions, wonderfully wringing all it can out of its subject matter.