David Brown

David Brown Newsreel is a collection of short films made in the 1960s by the Yorkshire Film Company for the David Brown Corporation. The films featured in this programme include:

"Assignment David Brown" (1969), which was produced to show the size and diversity of the company and features its factories, a range of products including tractors, engines, ships and hovercraft and the famous hand-built Aston Martin sports car; "Switch to Selectamatic" (1965), filmed at the Meltham factory and farms across the UK was made to introduce the new range of white tractors; "Newsreel No.1" (1961), shows David Brown tractors and equipment hard at work in Nigeria and Ghana; "Shrimping in Morecambe Bay", a short film which demonstrated one of the more unusual jobs that older David Brown tractors were put to; "Adverts", individually made for David Brown dealers, showing the latest tractors (includes 990 'Autodrive'

• Written and narrated by Alan Stennett
• 55 minutes
• English spoken
• publisher: Primetime video productions

Using vintage rally and working day material, interviews with David Brown Members, and archive film footage from the 1940s onwards, this video features a range of David Brown tractors and machinery including the original Ferguson-Brown, VAK1s in farming and military guise, Cropmasters, including a rare vineyard version, the little 2D market garden tractor, Albion farm machinery and the 25, 30 and 50 ranges of tractors.

An early Trackmaster crawler, and its 30 and 50TD descendants are also shown, along with several of the 7xx, 8xx and 9xx series tractors, including a unique 850 'on stilts' - with four feet of clearance which allowed it to work in the gooseberry fields.

The British appeal of this brand made it a logical choice to celebrate in the Jubilee Year of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and much of the production was filmed over the Jubilee weekend at a special David Brown Owners Club gathering held at the famous Carrington Rally. Written and narrated by Alan Stennett.

• Format: DVD Documentary / Colour / 16:9 Aspect
• Language: English
• Region 0
• Duration: 55 minutes

David Brown exported tractors and farm machinery all over the world, from the frozen mountains of Scandinavia to the tropical forests of Africa, and the company's film crews followed the tractors wherever they went. Fortunately, many of those films were preserved, and their fascinating glimps es of international agriculture from half a century ago have been used for this third volume of the David Brown on Film series.

The material includes an 'International Rescue' operation to get a PTO case to a snow-bound farmer in Norway, a State Fair in the USA, fruit farming in the Lebanon, rice and scrub clearance in Ghana. Tractors and implements from the 1940s to the 1970s can be seen at work in everything from dusty desert roads to swampy paddy fields, and the crops grown include rice, sugar cane, maize, bananas, ground nuts and grapes.

David Brown was a major name in British machinery exports, and this video shows it all, and its products, at the height of their fame. Written and narrated by Alan Stennett.

• Format: DVD Documentary / Colour / 4:3 Aspect
• Language: English
• Region 0
• Duration: 56 minutes

David Brown implements were constructed by what the company called a 'Great Alliance' of David Brown itself and a range of specialist agricultural engineers. Some were made to David Brown designs in their own factories. Others were designed by local agents but built by David Brown, and a larger number were constructed by companies such as Atkinson, Alley and McConnel to David Brown approved specifications.

This DVD sorts out some of the confusion by going back to original David Brown films and identifying many of the tools at work. The DVD features several different kinds of ploughs, from the conventional 3-furrow to the very unconventional 2-way plough, many cultivation and crop handling machines and a variety of specialist devices, including post-hole diggers, hammer mills, trailers and muck-spreaders.

Special attention is paid to Hurricane forage harvesters, the various lifting and handling tools, and the Albion range of implements which occupy a special place in the history of David Brown. DVD written and narrated by Alan Stennett.

• Language: English
• Duration: 79 minutes