My love of all things South West continues. Check out this press release. This sounds like a lovely project. I really fancy doing some kind of mini festival in North West London where I live. I'm going off to google hosting your own festival.
A restored 1960s mobile cinema is to star in a new BBC Two Daytime series on Britain’s film heritage.
The Vintage Mobile Cinema, which is shortly due to embark on a series of six screenings across North Devon, has been chosen by the BBC to provide the backdrop for a new series on archive film, The Reel History of Britain.
The mobile cinema has been touring villages across the region for the past year, following its painstaking restoration and subsequent involvement in a project backed by South West Screen and the UK Film Council.
Following its forthcoming tour of six venues*, the bus will accompany Melvyn Bragg as he travels across Britain filming the brand new series. Over the course of 20 episodes, Lord Bragg will retell the fascinating stories about how life in Britain used to be, through the film collections of the British Film Institute and regional film archives.
The new documentary for BBC Two Daytime will trace the descendants of those featured in the films, as they come face-to-face with their ancestors to discover how they lived their lives. Along the way viewers will see how ordinary British people worked, loved and lived in the 20th century, as seen through social documentaries, tourist information films, newsreels, and government propaganda films.
For each of the 20 episodes, the production team and the mobile cinema will travel to a different location in Britain. It will also be used to screen some of the archive film footage.
The unique 1967 cinema bus is the only surviving one of a fleet of seven that were built by the Government to showcase modern British production techniques. Five years ago, the bus was saved from following the other six into disrepair by owner, Ollie Halls, with the help of a small grant from the Transport Trust and assistance from Hill’s Body Works in Exeter. Seeing its potential, the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon came on board, applying to South West Screen for a £40,000 UK Film Council Digital Film Archive Fund grant to fund access to and digitization of archive film. Bus and film then came together under the Museum’s North Devon Movie Bus project, under which the restored vintage bus has spent the last year touring the local region, complete with a 22-seat fully tiered cinema, a high definition (HD) digital projection unit and Dolby 7:1 surround sound for the full cinema experience. Its incongruous appearance - part space craft and part luxury cinema - surprises and delights audiences at every screening.
*The Vintage Mobile Cinema will embark on its last tour as part of the North Devon Movie Bus project on March 10th, 2011 and will visit the following venues:
Thursday, March 10th: Hatherleigh Community Centre, 5pm – 8pm
Friday, March 11th: Torrington South St (Sydney House Carpark), 1pm – 7pm
Saturday, March 12th: Barnstaple - Lighting Up the Museum, 2pm – 8pm
Thursday, March 17th: Chittlehampton Village Square, 5pm – 9pm
Friday, March 18th: Bideford Quay, 1pm – 8pm
Saturday, March 19th: Barnstaple - End of the Movie Bus Project! 10am – 5pm
For more information visit http://www.moviebus.org.uk/
