At the Flicks

I took my mother and daughter to see a programme entitled Britain at Bay, Peace & War 1937-1949 this afternoon.
http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/mediatheque_britainatbay.html

This is archive material from the British Film Institute, which is touring the UK courtesy of the Independent Cinema Office. The site above has a link to the dates and venues as well as information about the eight films in this programme.

All eight films had something to recommend them and I can’t think of a better birthday treat for my mother and an education for my daughter (and me!).
Around the Village Green Directed by Evelyn Spice & Marion Grierson had the best line; an old codger was resisting change in the manner of old codgers everywhere and of all era’s:

"I haven't got a bath but I've got a river down the bottom of the garden so I can have a good bath when I want one."

There is more info on these directors at the link below.http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/594220/index.html

The best film was Spare Time, which looked at the range of activities that families, and workers in some heavy industries got up to in their spare time. Absolutely wonderful footage of a Kazoo Jazz Band with some happy children swinging to well-known tunes.

After the final film, the old chap behind us began to tell us he remembered this period as he had enlisted in the navy in 1940. He talked about the earliest air raids which came as the German planes swept up the river Forth trying to bomb the Forth Bridge. Of course this all led to an outpouring of reminiscences by my mother about the war years which as a small child she lived through.

Entirely predictably, daughter and I had opposite reactions to some aspects. She stated how she felt that everyone in the films looked so smart in their flowered dresses and coats and little hats. While my thoughts had been about the impracticality of factory and farm work in flowered dresses, to say nothing of the young women enthusiastically filling sand bags dressed in their Sunday best the week WW2 was declared. I count all my blessings that I can wear practical clothes without comment, which it took a war and women drafted into all kinds of work to establish as sensible.

Sig Other would have appreciated Sam Goes Shopping as it was narrated by one of his hero’s – Stanley Holloway*. This is an amusing film, which was really an advert for the Co-op.

The 8 short films take the viewer on an emotional roller-coaster from the build up to war and into the first days and weeks of what must have been devastating to people barely recovered from the war to end all wars. If you get a chance to see this touring programme take it.

* Stanley Holloway the comic narrator, and if I have had to listen to Sig Other spout, er declaim this over breakfast, then you can at least have a quick look over it. Imagine a thick Yorkshire, or possibly Lancashire accent (is there a difference?) http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michaelanthony.keating/Stanley_Holloway/The_Lion_and_Albert/the_lion_and_albert.html