This opening part looks at the work of socialite and amateur film-maker, Rosie Newman, who used her high society contacts to secure extraordinary access to the social elite.
Together with his younger brother Bolling, the American industrialist Harry Wright was wealthy enough to indulge his twin passions for travel and filmmaking. Both collected and shot film that captured the world at a pivotal time in history.
This programme examines Wright's extraordinary colour films of Africa and Central America, including his so-called Ethnographic Series of Unknown Mexican Indians.
This final episode features colour films shot by travelling film-makers in Europe, including footage shot in Berlin decked with red swastikas at the time of the Olympic Games and rare pictures of Warsaw just weeks before the Nazi invasion.