Jennings, Humphrey
Entry updated 17 November 2021. Tagged: Film, People.
(1907-1950) UK documentary film maker and editor, a co-founder of Mass Observation in 1936; his thirty films have gained increasing renown since his early death from a fall in Greece while scouting locations for a new film. Of sf interest is his Hitler Wins Alternate History short film, The Silent Village (1943), which is shot in documentary style. Much of his energy in the late 1940s was given over to the compiling of a nonfiction Anthology intended to illuminate the nature and costs of the Industrial Revolution in the UK. This anthology, Pandæmonium: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers, 1660-1886 (anth 1985), was completed by Charles Madge (1912-1996), also a co-founder of Mass Observation. Pandæmonium's vision of the coming of the Machine as combining the heavenly and the hellish has been influential, and may have had some impact on the creation of Steampunk. [JC]
Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings
born Walberswick, Suffolk: 19 August 1907
died Poros, Greece: 24 September 1950
works as editor
- Pandæmonium: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers, 1660-1886 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1985) with Charles Madge [anth: hb/from P J Loutherbourg, "Coalbrookdale at Night"]
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