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Urdd Gobaith Cymru (Welsh League of Youth) was founded in 1922 by Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards to foster the wellbeing of Welsh language culture among the children and young people of Wales. A keen amateur cinematographer, he was the first to make films consistently using Welsh language titling and showed his work in town and village halls around Wales. Many of his films captured the activities and travels of the League of Youth. 'Yr Ail Fordaith Gymraeg' follows a cruise on which Urdd members were taken for their cultural education, visiting Brittany, Galicia, Lisbon, and Tangier. The National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales holds several other films of the League’s activities such as gymnastic displays and the summer camps at Llangrannog and Glanllyn, which are still run by the Urdd today. Edwards's drama 'Y Chwarelwr' (‘The Quarryman’) (1935), set in Blaenau Ffestiniog and depicting life in the slate quarrying community, is a milestone in the history of the Welsh language filmmaking, being the first ever Welsh language sound film. The archive also holds a wealth of contextual information to accompany these films, such as letters and documents, memoirs, and oral history recordings. Other important Welsh language films in the archive's collection include 'Yr Etifeddiaeth' (‘The Heritage’) from 1949, which was the first documentary film to be narrated in Welsh and depicts a culture under threat in rural north west Wales. The Welsh Film Board, whose films are held by the Archive, operated in the 1970s and 1980s and was the first concerted attempt to establish a Welsh language film culture, predating S4C (the Welsh language television channel)’s later emphasis on Welsh language drama. The Archive also holds copies of this drama output. |
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