A collaboration between Flicks in the Sticks and the Huntley Film Archives will bring rare 20th century documentary film with a regional focus to new audiences in Herefordshire and Shropshire during February and March, connecting rural communities through history.

Herefordshire Yeomanry (?) volunteer fete at Vineyard Croft, Alfred Watkins, 1915 © Herefordshire Libraries

As part of the REWIND project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund as well as Screen West Midlands’ Digital Film Archive Fund, thirteen volunteers, trained as film archivists, have catalogued hitherto unviewed footage from the Huntley Film Archives. Some of this material will be screened at venues in the two counties from February to March 2011 with input from local community groups and museum services.

Highlights include very early material shot by photographic innovator, Alfred Watkins, showing lively scenes at Hereford May Fair circa 1910 as well as volunteers marching off from Hereford in 1914 to fight in World War I. There is also plenty of archive film that reflects the rural character of the area including cider making in the 1930s, the cattle market in the 1940s and Leominster Three Counties Fair in the 1950s. Speakers from the Huntley Film Archives will be present to introduce the films at each of the shows.
Screenings will take place in Ledbury, Leintwardine, at Hereford and Ludlow Museum Resource Centres, Burghill, Ewyas Harold, Kington, at Acton Scott Historic Working Farm, Fownhope, Peterchurch, Leominster, Eye and Moccas. For full details please visit the REWIND website at http://www.rewindarchive.org.uk .

A further selection of the very best archive material from the project with voice-over narration will subsequently be made available on DVD and will be screened more widely.