A Portrait of the collection

Screen Archive South East was first committed to the care and preservation of the moving image as found on film and video. Its gradual transformation from a film & video archive into a screen archive enables it to expand its collecting remit so that it can embrace over four centuries of screen history from the magic lantern of the 1600s to the new screen culture of the 21st century. The Screen Archive is particularly interested in the magic lantern’s representation of social histories and popular narratives from the 1850s to the 1920s and its relation to the emergence of film from the 1890s. New digitally-created material includes the work of artists, fiction and non-fiction linear programmes and interactive productions such as DVDs, CD-ROMs, computer games and websites.

The film collection includes documentaries, newsreels, advertisements, and ‘home movies’ and reflects the changing nature of life and work in the South East in the 20thC.

 

Its special features are:

• publicity material documenting the development of the seaside towns
• rural films chronicling village and agricultural life including May Fairs, harvesting, and hop picking
• early adaptations of Dickens and Hardy made at the Shoreham Studio, 1919-22
• ‘local topicals’ of Broadstairs in the 1930s by Enid Briggs - the largest single collection by a woman film-maker of the region
• family films representing particular social rituals such as weddings, birthdays and Christmas as recorded by different classes
• the Royal Sussex Regiment from the First World War to the Korean War
• representations of national moments of commemoration and celebration through historical pageants, the Jubilees of 1935 and 1977, the Coronations of 1937 and 1953, VE Day 1945 and the Festival of Britain in 1951

 

In collaboration with the British Film Institute and Hove Museum & Art Gallery, the archive has also assembled a unique collection of film and film-related materials (e.g. catalogues, photographs and apparatus) on the beginnings of film-making in the South East from 1895 to 1914. This includes work by the Hove Pioneers - G. A. Smith and James Williamson.