In 1952 General Film Distributors released the Gaumont-British Instructional production, Focus on Ethiopia, which was described as ‘the first of the new Focus series’. Monthly Film Bulletin’s review of the film concluded that ‘it will be interesting to discover if this series develops into a worthy successor to This Modern Age’ (MFB, 1953, 27). A few months later when Focus on India was reviewed, the journal argued that ‘this addition to the relatively new Focus series suggests that, given time, it may go some way towards taking the place of This Modern Age’ (MFB, 1953, 113).

This Modern Age, a monthly series of 20-minute documentaries, comprised 41 films released between September 1946 and January 1951. Film historian Leo Enticknap, in his analysis of the series, argued that it was a ‘politically motivated loss leader’, which, with little commercial justification and without any significant revenue, was designed to ‘fulfil a political objective for the Rank Organisation’. Enticknap viewed This Modern Age ‘very much as a product of its time’, and argued that its demise was indicative of broader shifts within the British documentary movement culminating in the Crown Film Unit – and the monthly COI releases – being closed in 1952 by the Conservative government, while television news and current affairs became more prominent (Enticknap, 2000, 218).

This Modern Age shared much in common with the Focus series. Both were released through the Rank Organisation, and focussed on specific aspects of politics, international relations or current affairs. Indeed a number of issues of This Modern Agerelated directly to imperial subjects, such as Palestine (1947), Sudan Dispute (1947), and The Fight in Malaya (1950), but the films within the Focus series were generally shorter (only nine or ten minutes) and this was a source of criticism in many of the reviews. In total, twelve titles from the Focus series, including Focus on the Nile, are listed within Monthly Film Bulletin between 1952 and 1954.

Today’s Cinema praised Focus on the Nile in March 1953 – ‘excellent photography. Very interesting’ – but Film User, aimed at the non-theatrical market rather than the cinema trade, was far more critical of the picture, referring to this ‘rather haphazard sequence of scenes’. It further argued that ‘a perpetual background of native-drum music spoils the few messages that this film can deliver’ (Today’s Cinema, 18 March 1953, Film User, October 1954, 484).

The film depicts both the Sudan and Egypt and highlights, in particular, the importance of the Suez Canal. ‘This great waterway is internationally controlled for the benefit of ships of all nations’, the commentary notes, adding that ‘its defence is vital, not only for the British Commonwealth, whose troops have already had the responsibility of guarding it, but to the whole of the free world’. In 1951 Egypt had repudiated the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty, which had provided the British with a level of control over the Canal and ensured that British troops were stationed in the Canal Zone, and by January 1952 fighting between British and Egyptian forces in the Suez Canal Zone escalated. This international dispute was linked to broader issues, most notably the political future of the Sudan, which would again come to prominence in 1952. General Muhammad Neguib, who was half-Sudanese, declared that one of his aims on assuming power after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 was to guarantee Sudanese self-determination. The Sudanese had previously feared Egyptian domination, but they ‘now became comrades-in-arms against British rule’. In February 1953 the Anglo-Egyptian agreement paved the way for Sudanese self-government and within three years, Sudan would achieve independence (Louis, 1999, 340).