Army Kinematograph Service

The Army Kinematograph Service (AKS) was established by the British government in August 1941 to meet the increasing training and recreational needs of an army at war. Created by the newly established Directorate of Army Kinematography, whose remit was "to be responsible for providing and exhibiting all films required by the Army (at home and abroad) for training, educational and recreational purposes", it expanded over the next few years to become the most prominent film production and exhibition section for a major part of the British Armed Forces.

Pre-1939, the Army Kinema Establishment, part of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps based at Aldershot in Surrey, had been responsible for making and exhibiting training films for the Army. In 1940 it was transferred to Wembley Studios (the 20th Century Fox Studios requisitioned for the war) to continue its activities. In August 1941 it was absorbed and expanded into the AKS.Thorold Dickinson was Head of Production (a role acquired partly through his involvement in the making of the highly successful The Next of Kin in early 1942, a film requested by the War Office and made at Ealing Studios), and he was initially instrumental in recruiting many of those who had been involved in the film industry. The result has been described as "a roll call of many of the finest film technicians whose skills were reflected in the quality of AKS training films" and some fairly well-known names contributed, others developing skills that assisted their post-war eminence; Eric Ambler, Roy Ward Baker, Thorold Dickinson, Freddie Francis, Carol Reed, Peter Ustinov and Freddie Young to name but a few.

The Directorate of Kinematography (DAK) started in April 1941 with only two branches. In October 1941, it moved to Curzon Street House, London W1 where it was based for the duration of World War II. In November 1941 it requisitioned the Curzon Cinema partly to meet its own screening needs, but also as a showpiece cinema for the services and for those of other government departments. By mid-1942 DAK had increased to five branches to deal with the growing demands of the war, covering such areas as policy, planning and production, finance, distribution and exhibition. In 1944 it assumed full responsibility for cinema facilities in North Africa, the Mediterranean area, the Far East and in 1945 it took over the cinema activities of NAAFI and ENSA. The centralisation of activities under DAK meant an increasingly efficient supply of cinema facilities to the Army at war, worldwide.

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