In August 1951 the Foreign Office wrote to the Central Office of Information explaining that ‘we have long had under consideration a proposal that a documentary film should be made about the control of the Nile waters and hydro-electric developments made possible thereby’. The plan was originally proposed in 1949 by the filmmaker Robin Carruthers, who had previously worked on the series ‘This Modern Age’, and had produced a number of films on the Middle East including Today and Tomorrow (1945) and Palestine (1947), and by the writer Arthur Calder-Marshall, a frequent collaborator with the British documentary movement. By August 1951, the Foreign Office was ready to commission the film, and was eager to release it during the following year to mark the 50^th anniversary of the completion of the Aswan Dam (INF 6/801).

However, the plans for the film were affected by the changing political situation in Egypt and the Sudan. In August 1951, the F.O. reported that ‘we learnt earlier this month that the Egyptian Government have no objection [to the film], and would like to know as soon as possible the precise date on which a film unit might arrive’. Yet, by December, the Foreign Office representative stated that ‘because of the difficulties with Egypt, it is now proposed that the Egyptian part shall be made from existing library material’ (INF 6/801). In November, the Wafd-led government had repudiated the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which had allowed British troops to protect the Suez Canal, and anti-British violence escalated throughout the region. The subject of the film – the water supplies from the Nile – was now part of a major international issue, and the film thus became increasingly important as a work of international propaganda.

The publicity notes for the film outline this, as they emphasise that the developments made in the past 100 years came ‘largely with British guidance and help’. The notes state, for example, that the Aswan Dam was completed in 1902 with ‘British capital and by British engineers’, and that the Gebel Aulia Dam was built in 1937 ‘by British engineers for Egyptian government’ (INF 6/801). Reviews further commented upon the British role in these developments. Film User explained that the film ‘shows how millions of acres of desert land have now been made fertile by nine major dams, built by British engineers, on the Nile’ (Film User, July 1953, 380). A subsequent review argued that ‘not only is this a documentary of outstanding interest; it is also admirable propaganda for Britain; for Gezira was conceived and largely executed long before the world had heard of Point 4 and the man-made oases on the Russian Steppes’ (Film User, October 1954, 482). The British had instigated the Gezira scheme, a huge irrigation project in the Sudan, in 1925.

The stories from the film’s production – printed in the publicity notes – also endorsed continuing British development within the Sudan. The film unit had made two visits to the Sudan during 1952 and had lived in the village of Remietab for two months. ‘The old village of Teulah, which in the film represents pre-Gezira Remietab, is only thirty miles from Remietab’ the notes explain. ‘Driving to it each day, out of the watered, green Gezira with its smiling tenant farmers, the unit seemed to step back a thousand years in time. When they left the village to return home, the Sheik of Teulah went over to their car and asked: “When will you dig the deep well, when will the canal be brought to us, for we are thirsty and tired?”’ (INF 6/801). The film, and the publicity surrounding it, thus emphasised the continuing role of the British within the area and the importance of British and Sudanese co-operation. This message was offered at a moment when Sudanese nationalism was growing; in February 1953 Britain and Egypt granted self-government and self-determination for the Sudan.

The distribution of the film illustrates the desire on the part of the Foreign Office to present this film to international audiences, most notably in America. After an initial showing early in 1953 of a 20-minute version – provisionally entitled Nile Valley – the Foreign Office sponsored an additional 26-minute version, specially tailored for American television. The Foreign Office representative noted that television is ‘becoming increasingly important as a medium of publicity in the United States, one of our prime targets for films, as it enables us to bring our films to a large number of Americans who would otherwise not see them’ (INF 6/801). The film was still available to hire through public libraries in America and did play in a variety of exhibition contexts – for example in schools in Long Beach as part of the ‘First Foreign Annual Film Fair’ in May 1954 (Independent Press Telegram, 16 May 1954, 52) – yet it also appeared throughout this period on American and Canadian television. For example, it featured in the television listings in Winnipeg in December 1955 (Winnipeg Free Press, 1 December 1955, 14), in Massachusetts in February 1956 (Lowell Sunday Sun, 29 January 1956, 18) and in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in October 1959 (Portsmouth Herald, 9 October 1959, 9).

Self-consciously artful in the manner of ‘prestige’ documentaries of the period, They Planted a Stone was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1953 and played at both the Edinburgh and Venice Film Festival (for which it was dubbed in Italian).