Flickering images of a vanished world capture spirit of our past
Previously undiscovered home movies shed fascinating light on decades of Welsh social history, as Chief Reporter Martin Shipton finds out
THEY are the nostalgic images that show a rare glimpse of bygone Wales. The producers of a documentary being screened on BBC One Wales tomorrow have uncovered a treasure trove of rarely seen films found in attics and garages across Wales.
Together, these home-movies reveal the collective story of all our lives, from a Butetown youth group, to how the south Wales Valleys celebrated victory in World War II.
The programme-makers discovered many of the films following a national appeal for members of the public who had old amateur movies to get in touch.
In many cases their old cine reels had lain untouched, tucked away in cardboard boxes for decades. Once they’d been digitised, the producers returned the films to their owners and recorded them watching their old home movies for the first time in years.
In a glorious riot of colour, their films conjure up a vanished world of street parties, shared labour and home-made entertainment.
And as the interviewees share the intimate stories of the flickering figures on screen, these films reveal the extraordinary joys, dramas and heartbreaks of ordinary people from across Wales.
The programme was a partnership project with the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, and also features home movies that have lain for years in the archive’s vaults.
Most notable among these are films of colourful 1950s’ carnival parades in the Dulais Valley and a collection of movies featuring the children of Tiger Bay’s Rainbow Club – a group that organised excursions and activities for the children of Butetown during the 1960s.
The programme-makers reunited a group of childhood friends from the club, who were delighted to see their old films. In the documentary the friends talked about Malcolm Capener and his wife, who ran the club. Mr Capener, the chairman of South Wales Films, shot the footage of Tiger Bay shown in the film.
On seeing the footage, one woman said: “Whenever there was something on in Wales, if Mrs Capener was in power we were there in the front row. She made sure that we shone.”
Another woman said: “(Mrs Capener) was excellent at getting things for free so every celebrity that passed through Cardiff, she’d be there and she’d make sure that she got some donation from them.
“Shirley Bassey gave her a dress that was raffled, Bruce Forsyth gave her something. She was really good at raising money to keep the centre going.”
The documentary includes amateur footage shot by Archie Andrews, a pharmacist who took full advantage of the access his job gave him to cheap film stock.
His films document the rich cultural life of the Cynon Valley in the 1930s and 1940s, at a time when cine cameras were still rare. They show Aberaman residents celebrating VE Day and burning an effigy of Hitler.
We also see the members of Aberaman Silver Band rowing out to an island in a lake in Aberdare Park to give a performance.
In the words of Archie’s cousin, John Price, who collected many of the films: “We’ve got a remarkable legacy from Archie. Aberdare and Aberaman in particular was a cultural centre: a lot of people from here went forward to the Eisteddfods. It shows the culture that was here.”
Evan Morgan was a mechanical fitter who invested in a movie camera and filmed local events in the Pontypridd area during the 1950s. His daughter, Patricia Haynes, of Wattstown, features in Wales’ Home Movies, talking about her late father’s films, including a 1950s’ camping holiday to Burry Port which shows the family ballroom-dancing in the dunes, playing the accordion and jug, and even building their own toilet out of a wooden packing case.
Another film, of the 1953 Coronation celebrations in Pontypridd, shows a giant crown made of Corona bottles being paraded through the streets of the town.
In Patricia’s words: “He’s left a legacy you can see over and over again. I’m very, very proud.”
Wales’ Home Movies will be shown on BBC One Wales at 4.50pm tomorrow