Harold Baim
| Harold Baim | |
|---|---|
| Born | 6 April 1914 Leeds |
| Died | 1 March 1996 Reading |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Film producer, director and writer |
Harold Baim (1914–1996) was a British film producer, director and writer. He was born in Leeds in 1914; he died in Reading, Berkshire in 1996.
According to his family, Baim left Leeds after the death of his father in 1929 and moved to London in 1931. Baim originally wanted to be a journalist but instead gained employment working the clapperboard for film producers at MGM and Renown Pictures. Baim then worked for film producer and distributor George Minter and moved on to Columbia Pictures selling their films to the Odeon, ABC and Gaumont cinema chains.
Baim became a prolific producer of 35mm short films, creating over 300 titles in his lifetime. The subjects of his early films, made by his company The Federated Film Corporation, were released in the early 1940s and featured well known music hall and variety theatre acts such as Wilson, Keppel and Betty. His later and more well known films were mainly travelogues filmed in England, Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, America and Asia as well as music compilations featuring footage of well-known pop music acts of the era.
Nearly all of the Baim titles released after 1957 are in colour using 'Eastman-color' film stock and were produced for distribution by United Artists in the UK. Many are in wide-screen formats. Baim was keen to use wide screen and the paper archive shows he rented 'Camera-scope' lenses from Adelphi Films in the mid 1950s. A project to restore and digitise the surviving films was started in 1999 by The Baim Collection Limited. After fifteen years work over eighty of the surviving one-hundred and thirty titles have been restored. More than seventy films are thought lost http://www.baimfilms.com/lost.asp .
A selection of more than ninety-five of the films are available for review by researchers and producers on-line via Vimeo.
Twelve titles may be found from time-to-time as part of the programming on Sky Arts in HD: Swinging UK, UK Swings Again, Floating Fortress, Delta 8-3, S.S. France, Girls Girls Girls!, Big City, Pete Murray Takes You To Nottingham, Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham, Get 'Em Off, Playground Spectacular and Jugglers and Acrobats.
BBC Television Entertainment Department produced a television programme entitled Harold Baim's Britain on Film featuring 30 minutes of clips from twenty-three of the British films. Part of the "On Film" series it was first broadcast on BBC 4 on 27 July 2011, repeated 29 May 2012. The programme was received enthusiastically by reviewers and critics in newspaper reviews after the first transmission in The Telegraph, The Independent, The London Evening Standard and The Mirror which are available on-line.
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