Although the main batch of REWIND screenings are now over, there’s renewed life for many of the local archive films featured in the programme in the form of three compilation DVDs that will be showing as shorts alongside the main feature at Flicks in the Sticks venues from this autumn.
Clips have been edited with the help of Film and Video students at Hereford College of Arts into the following themes: Herefordshire Childhood, Herefordshire Work and Herefordshire Leisure. Each short film has voice-over narration by Amanda Huntley or Robert Dewar from Huntley Film Archives. Because of rights issues the DVDs are not licensed for sale or public hire but information about shows can be obtained from Flicks in the Sticks on 01588 620883.
In the meantime, here are some images from the screenings that took place from mid February to late March in thirteen venues around Herefordshire and Shropshire. In the end, most of the content was specific to the area (with a strong Herefordshire bias with slight variations between the north and south): cider, hop-picking, Young Farmers learning to judge bulls in Bodenham, rail journeys through orchards, past crooked houses, into the Malverns, the River Wye, shows, races, sporting events (an inordinate amount of them featuring motorcycles) and, of course, farming practices. Perhaps the most extraordinary footage of all (courtesy of Derek Foxton) was shot by public figure, ley lines theorist and photographic innovator, Alfred Watkins on a hand-turned 35mm cine camera. It brings to life the jostling crowds, monumental rides, freak shows and intense sociability of Hereford May Fair in the 1910s as well as row upon row of troops marching down Eign Street on their way to Gallipoli via Oswestry on the 6th August 1914.
Each REWIND show was introduced by a member of the Huntley Archives team, Amanda Huntley, Robert Dewar and Caroline Jenkins, who ably talked the audience through what they were seeing, particularly the silent footage. Though the screenings were anything but silent. Audiences were encouraged to share moments of recognition with their neighbours and the shows took on something of the quality of a prayer meeting. A film of the Three Counties Show when it took place at the Leominster showground in more recent times (1950!) elicited quite a few identifications of acquaintances and relatives; someone in Kington even recognised one of the ushers at the show as his own father. The sum total of the information that the Archive now has about many of its Herefordshire films is now vastly greater than when the cycle of screenings started.
Volunteer archivist John Tallis at the Ledbury Market Theatre screening
Most of the shows were divided in two halves with a refreshment interval to give time to people to chat and to feedback to the speakers about what they had seen.
Huntley Archives' Robert Dewar chats to some ladies at Leintwardine Community Centre
On display in a cabinet downstairs at The Hereford Museum Resource and Learning Centre, one of Alfred Watkins’ original light meters that the audience had just seen on screen .
Amanda Huntley introducing the films at Hereford Museum Resource and Learning Centre
At Ludlow Museum Resource Centre, an opportunity to view some lovely Super 8 colour footage shot in the 1970s at Cleobury Mortimer by Joe Bieli, a Swiss cine enthusiast who worked for Muller Engineering.
Audience at screening in foyer of Ludlow Museum Resource Centre and Library
One lady commented to another during the interval break at Burghill, “We have to come out here to the films to see one another.”
Caroline Jenkins from Huntley Film Archives introduces the films to the Burghill audience
At Ewyas Harold the afternoon screening was followed by a lavish tea for members of the audience.
Tea after the show at Ewyas Harold Memorial Hall
Quick run through at Acton Scott Working Farm barn before the audience arrives
A huge audience of 130 people at the REWIND screening at Lady Hawkins School Sports Barn in Kington. Another of the programme highlights was the wonderful material shot in around Kington for the Picture House cinema in town during the 1920s not least the noble sport of motorcycle football.
The sports barn at Lady Hawkins School in Kington fills up
Another large turnout for the afternoon screening at Fownhope Memorial Hall, hosted by the Local History Group, where Herefordshire home movies discovered as part of the Media Archive for Central England’s Full Circle project were also shown. One lady who’d already seen the show in Kington the previous week had come back for more! Her companion had travelled down from Stourbridge specially.
Two visitors to the Fownhope Memorial Hall Rewind screening
Many people who’d never been to a Flicks in the Sticks show before came out to the REWIND screenings because local people and places from their past were to be on screen.
St Peter's Church, Peterchurch Rewind screening
The two final screenings at Cawley Hall, Eye, were part of Borderlines Film Festival. The team at Eye (including Flicks in the Sticks promoter and REWIND volunteer archivist Anita Syers-Gibson) had assembled an exhibition of local photographs and cuttings including a programme from the 1950 Three Counties Show that was featured on screen and was invaluable in helping to identify some of the dignitaries in procession as well as some of the characters at the show.
Taking in the display at Cawley Hall, Eye, photo Lucie Kerley
Amanda Huntley introduces the Cawley Hall, Eye Rewind show, photo Lucie Kerley
At Moccas, as at Fownhope, there was a special guest, Dennis Hitchings who had appeared as a 16 year old tractor driver in the film Spring on the Farm, shot in 1942 on a farm near Ross. Questioned by Amanda, he said that he hadn’t been aware of being filmed as he went rather seriously about his work. Now in his eighties he still drives tractors and is an expert on vintage machines.
Dennis Hitchings, who appeared aged 16 in Spring on the Farm, at Moccas Village Hall
“Dennis Hitchings…I was made quite speechless….there he was before us…. that rather stern looking…well, teenager, in a grown up suit suddenly standing there an old man….gosh, that is a moment I will never, ever forget….” (Amanda Huntley)
