Desert Victory

Produced by the British government during World War II, these documentaries, respectively, glorify a pivotal allied offensive and the cameramen who brought it home. Desert Victory, Oscar winner for Best Documentary of 1943, is well-crafted propaganda tracing the British triumph over the Germans in North Africa. Its close-range footage becomes all the more impressive with Cameramen at War, a 15-minute postscript that tracks the feats of men who risked (and in many cases lost) their lives to shoot wartime pictures with power and immediacy. B