During the 1930s Marion Grierson, the younger sister of John Grierson – generally considered the leading presence in 1930s British documentary – ran the Travel and Industrial Development Association (TIDA). Initially affiliated to the Empire Marketing Board and then the GPO Film Unit, in 1935 it became closely connected to the Strand Film Company (headed by Grierson’s husband Donald Taylor). Film historian Rachael Low noted that Grierson had filmed in London in 1933 with cameraman Bill Shenton, and that the material was used in several productions, including the silent GPO film, St James’s Park(1934). This film formed the basis for ‘its sound counterpart’, Heart of an Empire, one of a series of travel documentaries produced by Grierson – for example, The Key to Scotland, Beside the Seaside– showing scenes of British life (Low, 1979, 76, 98).

While the TIDA films were primarily intended to encourage tourists to England, and thus played predominantly overseas, Strand made particular efforts to exhibit its films theatrically in England. Indeed, Monthly Film Bulletin in its review of Heart of an Empire noted that its purpose, at least initially, was ‘theatrical exhibition’ (MFB, 1935, 154). The BFI holds four versions of this film, seemingly dating from 1935 to 1942. These are edited to accommodate two different monarchs and three Prime Ministers, prompting archivist Catherine Pyle to suggest that the films were re-edited and updated for schools. Certainly, the re-edits suggest that the film continued to play non-theatrically throughout this period, schools probably being its primary market.

Film historian Paul Swann, in his account of the British Documentary Movement, noted a further influence on the film’s production. He listed Heart of an Empire – along with other Strand films including The Future is in the Air (1937), Air Outpost (1937), Wings over Empire (1939), and African Skyways (1939) – as a film sponsored by Imperial Airways. Strand was, along with the Realist Film Unit, the leading pre-war independent documentary unit, and its documentaries sponsored by Imperial Airways served in part to ‘”bring alive” the different outposts of the Empire’ (Swann, 1989, 106). Gordon Pirie, in his study of British aviation films, cited Airport (1934) and Heart of an Empire as examples of Imperial Airways ‘cinematic exercises in mass persuasion’ (Pirie, 2003, 124). The Imperial Airways films illustrate the linking together and mapping of various peoples and places, through this new means of transport. As the most direct descendants of the EMB, these Strand films promoted technological and humanitarian advances throughout the Empire, highlighting the economic and technological networks connecting the colonies and Dominions.

Monthly Film Bulletin, in its review of Heart of an Empire, suggested that the film would serve as an educational title in teaching ‘courses on London and its history, and particularly its importance as a centre of the Empire’ (MFB, 1935, 154). Sight and Sound further noted that ‘the Heart of an Empire is not, as one might imagine, London, but rather the heart of London itself – St James’s Park and its environs’ (Sight and Sound, Autumn 1935, 128). The filmic representation of London as an imperial centre was subsequently reaffirmed by a number of films produced by the Colonial Film Unit during the 1940s, such as An African in London (1941), and African Visitors to the Tower of London (1949). These CFU films, while intended for African audiences, sought to emphasise, through the iconography of London, both Britain’s primacy and her acceptance of Africans within this imperial establishment.