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1972-01-01
N/A
28 min
The Tide of Traffic is a 1972 British short documentary film directed by Derek Williams, made by British Petroleum as a contribution to the UN Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm 1972. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
This is a curiously dry documentary produced by one of the world's largest energy companies for the United Nations and it's not especially clear why. We start in the car-free Venice and then travel the length and breadth of Europe and the United States illustrating the exponential increase in motoring for leisure and business purposes and the concomitant increase in car production, road building and debris accrued after we are finished with cars and tyres alike. The narration is adequate. Descriptive but not especially insightful, and though it does remind us of a certain age of life before cars went everywhere all the time, it's still nothing of great interest or innovation beyond displaying the relentless and unstoppable progress for the roadbuilding and using lobbies. Some interesting car designs though - square and angular was clearly in style, especially Stateside.
