Enigma Cinema

Home of the Projected Picture Trust (PPT). View short excerpts from British documentaries, WWII newsreels or propaganda films.

On special request, students can also learn about the history of still and moving images and see an amazing diversity of apparatus belonging to the National Museum of Cinema Technology. Video cameras can be seen in context with their ancestors. Students can have ‘hands-on’ re-winding of a silent film and operate some equipment. Projection rooms were ‘men-only’ before the War, and the emergence of women projectionists can be discussed. Leaders of groups are asked to ensure that visiting groups understand the persistence of vision by which apparent movement is created. This may be demonstrated by the use of ‘flicker-books’ or by th teacher whirling a lit sparkler around in a circle.

Your guides are people who have worked in the cinema and can give insight into the workings of those superbly engineered machines that make possible the enjoyment that cinema has brought to millions.

The magic of the cinema has been with us for the last 100 years but from the 1960's onwards, the whole genre went into decline and this led to the formation of the Projected Picture Trust with a permanent exhibition of vintage cinema equipment at Bletchley Park. The PPT  archive currently has a databank of some 2000 headings which evaluate into something like 3000 records and covers everything from instruction manuals, technical drawings of projectors and installations to sales leaflets, newspaper clippings and photographs.

A visit to the Enigma Cinema will support the subjects of Media Studies, Drama, English, History, Technology and Art.

Learning objectives for the Enigma cinema

Students will be able to describe real propaganda film from WWII.

Students will be able to compare the modern cinema experience with that of Wartime cinema.

Students will be able to identify how much more important cinema was in the days before TV and the internet for the dissemination of information to the public.