''Hospitals Don't Burn Down!'' is a 1978
pseudo-documentary short film
A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...
directed by
Brian Trenchard-Smith
Brian Medwin Trenchard-Smith (born 1946) is an English-Australian filmmaker and author, known for his idiosyncratic and satirical low-budget genre films. His filmography covers action, science fiction, martial arts, dystopian fiction, comedy, ...
about a fire at a hospital.
Cast
*
Jeanie Drynan
*
Mark Edwards
* Ray Marshall
*
Ralph Cotterill
*
Ken Goodlet
Plot
A tossed cigarette from a patient causes fire to break out after midnight in a multi-storey hospital, cutting the top floors off from escape. It spreads quickly and despite the prompt action of the
fire department
A fire department (American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in th ...
, lack of fire safety training results in several fatalities.
Production
The movie was widely screened around the world and won a number of prizes. Trenchard-Smith says it is one of the movies of which he is most proud:
twon all sorts of industrial safety awards all over the world, and was Australia's highest-selling industrial film for 25 years, used all over the world. We staged a fire, cutting a multi-story hospital in half, bursting from the laundry chute out onto one floor. And the film was designed to have a whole series of lessons to be learned in a lecture afterwards. There were alarming incidents of smoking-related fires in their hospitals. It actually became a fire-safety film worldwide. It's actually a film I’m proud to have made, and I made it for very little money, but I’m very pleased that I spent the four months that I did making that. I was told that one hospital changed their arrangements after seeing the film, and moved the non-ambulatory patients from the fourth floor to the ground floor, and several months later, the fourth floor caught fire."Interview with Brian Trenchard-Smith", ''Ithaca'', 26 November 2012
accessed 3 February 2013
References
External links
*
Notes for trainers using the film* at Film Australia YouTube Channel
''Hospitals Don't Burn Down''at Documentary Australian Foundation
''Hospitals Don't Burn Down''at Oz Movies
1978 films
1978 short films
1970s short documentary films
Australian short documentary films
Films directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith
1970s English-language films
1970s Australian films
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