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'Scenes from Village Life', reflects a rural idyll of the Hampshire villages of Burghclere and Newtown in 1948. This well made amateur film, a mixture of black and white, and colour, was shot by the son of the local Rector and contains scenes of every day life in the villages. The film was made purely out of interest for the life of the village by one of its inhabitants who had been a film editor for the Crown Film unit during the war. The film-maker added his own commentary and soundtrack in the 1990s describing the scenes and adding the reminiscences of a villager who had been a child in the film. This film from the Wessex Film and Sound Archive illustrates much about the social history of the region and its rural areas through its portrayal of post war rationing, the school meals service and school discipline, the rural dress of the villagers, farming customs, the village community through its cricket match and flower show, harvest festival congregation and the now closed village railway station. The archive collection has several films showing villages and rural life in the region from different eras such as 'Seed Time and Harvest' (1937) which illustrates traditional farming in the region in the 1930s. The archive also holds community videos of villages and towns in Hampshire commissioned by the archive to commemorate the turn of the millennium. The rural images of the region stand in contrast to the depiction of the industrial strength of the busy port industries of the region and its maritime history. |
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