The Lost World Of Mitchell And Kenyon

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BBC2 has a secured exclusive television access to an amazing archive of 800 films made by two pioneering film-makers at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Lost World Of Mitchell and Kenyon gives an unparalleled visual record of Edwardian British life and the films, currently being restored by the British Film Institute, will rewrite British film history.

* These are amazing I strongly recommend this programme . These films were rediscovered only a couple of years ago . We had a glimpse of them on Look North a year back a film of a tram taken from the front of another tram it was just amazing to see Edwardian everyday life
 
Just a reminder about this programme . It is fascinating stuff. OK and a very good friend of mine is the historical consultant on the programme.
 
Just to bring this back to the top - anyone seeing the Ten O Clock News tonight would have seen samples of how amazing these films are
 
Hundreds of rolls of film capturing "ordinary" life in the UK at the start of the 20th century have been unearthed after 80 years.
Captured by a firm in Lancashire around 1901, they have been described as one of the most important finds in the country's film history over the last 100 years.

Some of the films were due to be shown at Sheffield University on Saturday, where they are being restored to their former glory.

Shown to hundreds of people on big screens at fairgrounds, they provide snapshots of a range of activities including the first electric tram in Accrington.


The films "capture an innocence"

Historian Peter Worden found the films in rusted barrels that had not been opened since the 1920s.

He told BBC News 24 the films are a "window on the past that has briefly opened".

Mr Worden, also an optician, said: "Had these films not been saved that window would have stayed shut forever."

He found up to 700 films in the barrels and while many are not in good condition, an operation to restore them to their original quality is underway.

Vanessa Toulmin, of the Sheffield University-based National Fairground Archive, said the films show the people in them did not look further than their local area to have a good time.


Efforts are being made to identify these players

"What was interesting for people at the turn of the century was their own city, their own town, their own environment, not scenes of Paris, or London, or America," she said.

"It was the first time people had ever seen themselves on the screen."

Mitchell and Kenyon, a Blackburn-based company, was commissioned to produce the films by travelling fairgrounds, which wanted special events recorded.

'Great War'

Other films show people on a day out on the Mersey, coal miners after their shift had ended and an early rugby league match on a snow-covered pitch.

Ms Toulmin said: "When you see the films of hundreds of schoolchildren...aged eight, nine and 10, you realise that in 10 or 12 years time the Great War would be starting and many of them would never have survived.

"So there's a sadness to them as well because they capture an age, an innocence."
 
Do they show that one on sex education - "Has the train entered the station yet Mrs Chormley-Warner?".
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There is footage inc of Hull Fair, Hull's West Park and a crowd gathered to watch horse drawn fire fighters leaving Worship St.

Life looks so civilised and uncluttered with the roads being free of transport.
 
I'm off to watch it now, and have told the Mammy it's on. She recounted that one male member from her mother's Lancashire side of the family at Clayton Bridge used to read to villagers from the daily papers, since most of them were illiterate. She agreed that most factory workers wore clogs, and, born in 1917, she was well aware that long shawls were used even when she was a child in Manchester. And that many of the working children featured in the weaving films would be as young as 12.
 
What a fabulous programme! I loved that they'd managed to locate descendants of some of the people in the films - it was quite moving to hear them say how great it was to see their ancestors as 'live' people, not just stuffy b&w still photos.

And how about all that cap and hat-twirling? The Edwardians were massively into cheerfulness at the slightest pretext, it seems. My mother said that although work is always portrayed as desperately grim, the weaving shed workers sang all day. The noise was so loud that at lunch (dinner oop nawth) time, a man would come in and wave a large pole around - trying to bawl out the time to break was pointless, and the sheds were so huge, a clock at each end would be lost to view.

I loved the way, as Dan Cruickshank pointed out, they stood around in the roads and streets, dodging the carts and trams, to natter and pass the time of day. As he says, for many, their homes were so crowded that it was more pleasant to be out in town than indoors. Note the leather belts holding up the voluminous rugby shorts, too!

I can't wait to see the next two instalments now.
 
Wonderful record, we saw that waving to a camera is not a modern TV phenomenon.

Spoilt for me somewhat, by the acted interludes.

Does everything have to be dumbed down?

Colin
 
Yes, agree with that, Colin. Also, having been told in a Radio Times review that the 'silence' of the films made them so much more poignant, why the heck did we have to have music played over them? Can nothing exist without some damn sound track?
 
They always had music when they were shown originally and the music chosen was original music played at the time . I shall ask my friend abouyt the acted interludes though . They were more Buster Keaton than Mitchell and Kenyon
 
Then we should've been told, Ardross. I was expecting to see some of them in silence. If they were always accompanied by some music, it would have made for better historical accuracy if we'd been told that, n'est pas?
 
We were -Cruickshank referred to the fact that these films werre often accompanied for example by brass band rather than the tinny piano we think of with silent films
 
Or in restaurants, pubs, lifts, malls, streets, shops, taxis, or waiting to be put through to speak to 'one of our operators'. The world is crowded out with the senseless in-fill of noise. It's just that when we were promised 'silent' film footage I rather recklessly assume it would be, er, silent... :confused:
 
I think that these programmes are brilliant and a great deal of thanks is owed tio the staff at the BFI who took three years to restore the films.

In last night's programme when we saw the teachers escorting the crowds of small boys, most of whom were wearing cheeky grins, I could not help but wonder how many would be lost on the fields of France and Belgium in just over a decade's time. For a moment I was very sad.
 
That was both of us thinking the same, then, Brian. You can see from the clips how they would be, still grinning and waving, off on their 'huge adventure', all school and work mates together, climbing aboard the troop trains. No wonder local cemeteries are full of lads of the same age. I can rarely watch any footage involving that dreadful war without shedding tears.
 
As usual, I'm going off topic but one of the most moving days I have ever spent was on a guided tour of the battlefields of Flanders. We were escorted by a young Belgian whose grandfather was from Ypres and had lived trough the war. If anyone is visiting Bruges or anywhere else in the area and wants to do something similar please feel free to contact me and I'll give you his details.
 
Well, that's me well and truly snuffled-out now, having watched the musical tribute to the dead of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Unbelievable that Eichmann and Mengele visited one night, and specially requested music and singing that moved them to tears... while the next day they went off to exterminate and 'experiment' - business as usual.

There was an immensely powerful, plaintive piece played among the birch trees at Birkenau (which, I didn't realize, means 'Valley of the Birches'). A lovely spot, except that as the gas chambers and crematoria failed to keep up with the increasingly huge intake of victims, people were made to sit and wait, in Orwellian horror and irony, in these beautiful birch woods, until their turn came to die.
 
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