Filmic public relations for a global audience: The United Nations and The Blue Vanguard.

• Investigates an early attempt at transnational public relations by the United Nations. • Explicates how UN used filmic documentary to visually promote the success of the UN's first peacekeeping operation. • Identifies filmic public relations narratives that advocate peace, co-operation and support for the UN. • Categorizes The Blue Vanguard as an example of global public information cinematicity by the United Nations. The project investigates the use of documentary film as a public relations tool by the United Nations (UN) for worldwide promotion of its first peacekeeping intervention in response to the Suez crisis of 1956. Specifically, it undertakes a historical investigation into the communicative purpose of the 1957 documentary film, The Blue Vanguard , which was made by the UN Department of Public Information (UNDPI). Beyond the interest connected with the intervention in the Suez crisis, the film is significant in the history of the UN's global public relations since it was one of the first films made for the UN by UK film director, Thorold Dickinson, who arrived as Chief of Film at the UN in October 1956. The author argues that Thorold Dickinson used the documentary to make a radical public information proposition to a global audience on behalf of the United Nations. Specifically, the public relations discourse and cinematicity in The Blue Vanguard reminded a global audience that achieving peace required a new level of cultural tolerance and global co-operation, involving codes of judgement beyond the nationalistically-determined registers of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]