Enduring racial stereotypes packaged as corporate advertising can spin orthodox post-colonial assumptions into a rapid topsy-turvy. Filmed ninety years apart, the short story of two fathers, two daughters and several crates of fresh lemons makes an unlikely pairing with that of white-clad Catholic Sisters cleaning the face of a leper-disfigured Indian patient. However, interpreted from the perspective of the social engagement praxis advocated by John Grierson, the founding father of the British Documentary Movement, productions such as Hong Kong Shangai Bank Corporation (HSBC)'s Lemon Grove TV commercial (2013) and amateur films made by the Saint Joseph's Missionary Society in India in the 1920s are methodologically matching while simultaneously operating outside their original social and cultural meaning. The theoretical framework employed in this chapter anchors the analysis of these two types of media productions in John Grierson's ‘First principles of documentary’, published in 1932. Relying on Grierson's theoretical agenda, this chapter examines the visual literacy that informs ongoing racial and economic hierarchies across two narratives of philanthropic work and will argue that it is possible to identify paradoxical legacies in terms of racial policy and global issues of social engagement. The core research material – a twenty-first century corporate banking advertisement and an early twentieth-century amateur colonial missionary film rife with imperial ideology – allows for a comparison of seemingly different understandings and representations of social, cultural and economic networks and of their interchangeable narratives. Most importantly, this comparative exercise suggests that the visual and thematic rhetoric unifying these two films qualifies them as unexpected examples of British Documentary Movement productions.

Most of the HSBC TV commercials are available to watch on YouTube – a free access distribution platform that complements the company's corporate agenda for buttressing global financial networks. Titles such as Golf – It's Anyone's Game, Expat – A Different Perspective: Expat Life or Johnny Yates Says Thank You, are advertisements produced as bite-size entertaining feature films relying on stunning cinematography, effervescent humour and a highly emotional charge that primes the viewer with a sense of globally shared altruism and belonging.