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Posts Tagged BFI
The Royal Wedding (1923)
What with all the brouhaha about William and Kate’s nuptials on 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey, it’s worth casting a gaze back to when these affairs were carried out in true style.
Thanks to wonderful BFI archive here’s the ‘wedding of King George VI and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Elizabeth II’s future parents, as incarnated by Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter in The King’s Speech’, multi-winner at this year’s Oscars.
Source: YouTube
Horses’ New Year’s Feast (1913)
We Say:
What better way to start the New Year than remember our equine friends?
BFI Say:
The occupants of the famous Horses’ Home of Rest enjoy a special feed for New Year. Founded in 1886, the Home was based at Westcroft Farm, Cricklewood, north-west London when this item from the popular Topical Budget bi-weekly newsreel was released on 4 January 1913. It moved twice thereafter, to Boreham Wood, Hertfordshire from 1933-75, and finally to Speen Farm in the Chilterns, Buckinghamshire, where it remains in operation to this day. Its website is at www.horsetrust.org.uk/
Source: YouTube/BFI
Our Advice this Festive Season! (1925)
Another dip into the wonderful BFI archive, here’s a message of Christmas cheer from our camel chums.
Source: YouTube/BFI
Ladies on Bicycles (1899)
In this evocative clip from the BFI archive, Victorian women demonstrate their slalom cycling skills.
Source: YouTube/BFI
Eton Wall Game (1921)
Here’s an example of posh people acting like prats.
It’s culled from the wonderful BFI Archive. Shot in 1921 for a contemporary newsreel, the film shows the annual Eton Wall Game, held on St Andrew’s day each year. Apparently ex-pupil George Orwell once took part and we assume Prime Minister David Cameron and his old school chum London Mayor Boris Johnson might have had a shove too.
Jolly japes had by all.
One Potato, Two Potato (1957)
Another classic from the BFI archive – here’s a charming look back at children playing and singing amidst a war-ravaged London in the fifties.
Source: YouTube/BFI
Colour On The Thames (1935)
The latest in our series of films from the BFI National Archive, Colour on the Thames (1935), provides a splendid window into life on the River Thames.
The journey begins up river and meanders down through a bustling Pool of London (between old London Bridge and the Tower Bridge) and on to the then hard working Docklands replete with an army of Thames Barges ferrying between the liners and cargo vessels.
More from the BFI Archive:
Snow (1963)
Rush Hour (1970)
The Smallest Car in the Largest City in the World (1913)
Tea Making Tips (1941)
Piccadilly (1929)
Trafalgar Square Riot (1913)
We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959).
We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959)
Continuing our series of short films from the BFI National Archive, here’s an excerpt from 1959’s We Are the Lambeth Boys.
Karel Reisz’s illuminating film was shot over six months at a youth club in Lambeth. The piece is packed full of wonderful accents, youthful exhuberance and a fantastic London streetscape.
As distant as the teens’ experiences seem, it’s interesting to consider just how different our own teenage years were compared to the wired generation emerging today.
More from the BFI Archive:
Snow (1963)
Rush Hour (1970)
The Smallest Car in the Largest City in the World (1913)
Tea Making Tips (1941)
Piccadilly (1929)
Trafalgar Square Riot (1913)
Colour On The Thames (1935)
Trafalgar Square Riot (1913)
Suffragettes stick it to the man in this film footage of a riot in Whitehall following a march in Trafalgar Square in 1913. Police escort Suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst from the scene (at 50 secs+).
The film forms part of the BFI’s National Archive and is the sixth in our recent selection from the historic film vaults.
More from the BFI Archive:
Snow (1963)
Rush Hour (1970)
The Smallest Car in the Largest City in the World (1913)
Tea Making Tips (1941)
Piccadilly (1929)
We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959)
Colour On The Thames (1935)
Piccadilly (1929)
The fifth in our series of films selected from the BFI’s National Archive, Piccadilly (1929) provides an exotic taste of inter-war London’s sleazy underbelly.
Dipping in to both the glamour of the West End and the sleaze of Limehouse and the then Chinese Quarter, this film – starring Anna May Wong – is notable for its at-the-time risque portrayal of inter-racial sex.
More from the BFI Archive:
Snow (1963)
Rush Hour (1970)
The Smallest Car in the Largest City in the World (1913)
Tea Making Tips (1941)
Trafalgar Square Riot (1913)
We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959)
Colour On The Thames (1935)
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