Karan Sheldon

Go directly to the Comments tab to see how people are attached to the tourist delights of the more recent past, for example, "We used to ride up on the Shipley Glen tramway, walk right across the Glen to Eldwick where we used to have a lemonade at the pub and come home a different way." The Shipley Glen footage (is HPL Brs. the production company?) was found by Eric Hall; it is a serendipitous find by the creator of the favorite Ower Bit Bog Oil which was selected by Guest Curator Ian McMillan. Northeast Historic Film has amateur footage of rural fairs, including Elizabeth Woodman Wright's scenes from West Paris, Maine, in the 1930s where children ride a ferries wheel and spectators crowd around harness racing.

Children address the camera, waving from a very long line of vehicles. I had to look up the term "charabanc" used in the Description. At 2:15 we see the cinema facade from across the street, then pan the crowd before returning to the distant viewpoint to watch vehicles. Do we know where the outing went? From the point of view of mobility, it hardly matters, as there is much to contemplate in the nexus of the Working Men's Club, women and children, and the conveyances. The catalog of faces reminds me of "See Yourself" local films of the era and Northeast Historic Film's "Movie Queen" series by women itinerant filmmakers in the 1930s.

This amateur color film depicts couples at a pub, The Green Man, in Malton [ends at 02:09]. It is a series of portraits, which the Description points out may include stages of inebriation; certainly we see hilarity and public displays of affection between a man and a woman, and then two men. What I like about the film is the conjunction of leisure and local gathering in a family-owned workplace. It is a personal film on several levels, situated in a public place. The Context notes point out that the pub was owned by the Tate-Smith family; the head title announces Mrs Tate Smith & her guests. Is that Mrs. Tate Smith in the chapeau at 9 seconds and again at 41 seconds? You can visit The Green Man at 15 Market Street. Check out the detailed New Years contextual notes.

The Glasshouses at Wentworth Woodhouse features art titles of distinction and gorgeous color film. Note the black smoke emerging from behind the house in the first view of the facade: garbage burning, a coal furnace (note the role of coal in this estate), or something else? Close-ups of vivid flowers and fruit follows views of visitors entering the greenhouse. This selection indicates the interest value of a rich person's avocation, while connecting with botanical studies. We don't know what connection the creator, a dentist, had to the greenhouse. At Northeast Historic Film we have the Cameron Bradley home movies (1936), featuring the greenhouses of Wolfpen Farm in Southborough, Mass.; the Bradley landscape was designed by Fletcher Steele. Wentworth Woodhouse, called a "palatial pile," is open to the public but the greenhouses are gone. Today, Wentworth Garden Center and Historic Walled Gardens is a separate attraction.

This post-war travel-trailer film begins with process details of creating a streamlined wooden trailer. The trailer's form and glossy paint speaks of airplanes and streamlined train bodies. The trailer we see built and carefully emerging between urban buildings reappears in the background at 5:33 and a closer shot follows immediately. Perhaps we see the intrepid grandparents in a simpler trailer with curtained door. The Wilkinson family traveled about 120 kilometers from their home to the shore. Multi-generational play at the beach and in the water rewards close observation with plenty of apparatus from the bicycle in the b&w; scenes, then an inflatable raft, beach chairs, and boats. The color film and excellent transfer show the gear and vacation apparel to advantage.

Travel and mobility--the excitement of two wheels on rough road and through water. I'll start by noting the Yorkshire phrase to which I was introduced by Graham Relton in 2012. Go to the end of the reel at 6:20, where the announcer closes with, "Hear all, say all and say nowt.” Throughout, for "the world's most famous roughriding trial," the narration is great, chock full of names and self-referentiality, e.g., "and me with scarecrow hat..." Northeast Historic Film offers the Hilda and Meyer Davis's home movies (1932) with the bandleader on a motorcycle; O.P. Geer (1937), an Amateur Cinema League member with NY motorcycles, and the Bucksport (Maine) motorcycle scramble, ca. 1967, "wipeout in small pond."