Flying a Kite
- Streatham
- 1903
Crowds pack the streets of Hong Kong for a stunning procession of dragon dancers, drummers and stilt walkers in celebration of George VI's crowning.
Sadly, the colour in the unique 8mm print of this film has badly deteriorated, leaving only an intense magenta. But this lends an eerily beautiful glow to the procession of gloriously decorated Chinese lanterns, drummers and lion and dragon dancers celebrating George VI's coronation - a lively contrast to the pomp and circumstance of the parallel events far away at Westminster Abbey.
"Chinese Community Demonstrates its loyalty to King George VI" - crowds, flags, and bunting; Chinese Pailaus or triumphal arches; Chinese procession including dragon, lanterns, banners, floats, drummers and acrobats.
Home movies are intimate catalogues of everyday life: birthdays and holidays, childhoods and neighbourhoods. Each reel is a private scrapbook - memories of cherished people, places and times committed to film. Rarely shared outside the family, home movies are the most intensely personal kind of filmmaking. They are by us, of us, for us. Victorian inventors put filmmaking gear in the hands of wealthy amateurs, but decade by decade, home moviemaking technology has become ever cheaper, simpler and more ubiquitous. Our home movies look much as they always have: in and out of focus, thumbs over the lens, wobbly framing, over-enthusiastic pans. But these flaws can't diminish their warm authenticity. Collectively, the nation's home movies make up a patchwork archive of British social life, of whims and ways, loves loved and lives lived.