The School Films (produced mainly by the school's Film Society) are now available to view on YouTube, thanks to Old Wyvernian Mick Howell. Here's the link -
https://www.youtube.com/@Wyvernians/videos
Eighteen films are there for you to binge-watch! Well, it's got to be better than watching Strictly Come Dancing or Bake-Off! The 1970 film, entitled 'The City we Live in' has already amassed over 700 views (as at 18/10/24) and includes some rare footage of the demolition of the Bell Hotel in Humberstone Gate.
Thanks again to Mick for all his work on this. We hope you enjoy looking for yourself in the films....it's possible to slow them down on YouTube.
Creating viewable and digital copies of the films
The films came to light via old boy Keith Duguid.
Brian and Dennis spent a few evenings at Doc Burrows' house, watching them on a projector.
It was September 2001, as Dennis recalled it coincided with the attack on the Twin Towers Trade Centre in America.
A special film night was arranged in November 2001 at Downing Drive to raise funds to have the cine films transferred to VHS. Here is a poster of the event:-
Enough funds were raised so Brian arranged for the transfer to be done by early 2002 by Welford Audio Visual of Oadby.
There is a detailed year by year description of who and what are in the films, compiled by Doc Burrows, and a similar one done by Chris Jinks. Here is a summary:-
John Worley and Graham Morton also put together a piece about their memories of the school films as both of them were involved with the Film Society from its beginning.
Here are some photos taken by Graham Morton at the screening:-
Three of the faces are well known - the fourth is Brian's father-in-law, Harold Hall, who owned a projector and did the screening of the films for us. He also showed them at the early Reunions.
Eventually dvd copies of the films were created and sold mainly at the annual reunions
On seeing our Facebook post advertising the films on YouTube old boy Simon Turrell reacted thus:-
"....There were two school films in 1970, one was "The City We Live In" and the other was "Take Me Back", which I made with the late Ian Ward.
I'm bound to say that the documentary was better received by the audience in the school's main hall than our effort which was a more avant- garde offering.
Our film was an uneasy mixture of Magical Mystery Tour and the Prisoner - sadly the audience were baffled by the meaning of the film and we would have been hard put to explain what it was all about.
All credit to Mr Anderson who ran the school cine club for giving us our creative head.
Inexplicably the film has been preserved for posterity by the University of Lincoln through their Screen Archive for the Midlands (www.macearchive.org). Ian Ward's follow up film in 1971 ("Reaper's Revenge"), a much more coherent and polished production, has also been preserved and digitised.
I was pleased to see a recent item on Facebook about the films....."
Here's an item (presumably from the school magazine) about the 1970 films that Simon is referring to:-
