Educational Media Reviews Online

This engaging film covers the basic history and technology of the press and the system of cast moveable type as developed by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century. Under the pretext of building a press just like that used by Gutenberg (for which no contemporary drawings or plans still exist), the presenter, actor and writer Stephen Fry, takes us on a tour of Mainz, Strasbourg, and other locales inhabited by Gutenberg as he and his associates sought more efficient and accurate ways of faithfully reproducing text. Along the way we gain an overview of the various social forces—religious, political, and economic—that contributed to and impeded the quest for printing for printed book. We also see demonstrated the basics of type founding, papermaking, and the printing process. (Only ink-making is left out of the mix.) Stephen Fry rightly emphasizes the miraculous and world-changing nature of the invention of this form of printing.

The scope of the film quite broad and so likely to be of interest to those teaching courses that touch on book history or print culture, whether from the standpoint of economic history, the history of communication technologies, or simply the history of western civilization, though the emphasis is on material culture and the physical conditions that allow for the reproduction of text. Given the careful demonstrations of the printing process, this film would also to be of useful in setting the historical context for art students studying letterpress printing and the other book arts. It offers a lively mix of expert interviews, historical narrative, travelogue, and demonstration. The audio and video are clear and well produced. This DVD would be a fine addition to most university library collections.