AV News 183 - February 2011
Great Northern Weekend
Eric and Dave Deeming
Applause opened the Great Northern
AV weekend for the travellers from
Aberdeen and Holland who had come
through heavy snowfalls to be here for
the three-day event.
The opening event on Friday 3rd
December 2010 was a presentation by
Geoff Senior from the North West Film
Archive. The archive was set up in 1977
and is based at the Manchester
Metropolitan University and is one of the
largest public moving image collections in Britain. The archive rescues and
ensures the survival of films and videos about the north west of England for the
education and enjoyment for the regions people both for today and the future.
The archive has over 30,000 items in the collection that show many varied
and interesting aspects of life from the early cotton mills to the police training
films showing how to deal with an accident when a man was run over by a horse
and cart to controlling traffic in the middle of Manchester - a far cry from today's
grid locked town centres. Other films showed the Morecambe volunteers as they
trained before going to fight in the First World War. One of the filmmakers was
Jack Gilbert who went on to work on the classic film African Queen.
The archive is always looking for more film to restore and they do copies for
people who let them have the film (copyright is still with the photographer
according to Geoff Senior.)
Saturday 4th December 2010 dawned cold and frosty as we all assembled
for the 16th Great Northern Festival. Howard Gregory welcomed everyone and
went into plan B as essential people were unable to make it. Volunteers
stepped into different roles to ensure that the festival went ahead as planned.
The jury were Ian Bateman FRPS MPAGB who was the chairman, John Rowell
ARPS DPAGB and Howard Bagshaw ARPS DPAGB.
The opening sequence was by Chris and Valerie Elliott with Peter Coles,
called 'Colour Wash'. In all there were 34 entries with 9 in the restricted
category, an entry that is important to all festivals if they are to carry on. There
were some excellent sequences and it was difficult to pick a winner because
they were so close but at the end of the day there had to be a winner.
Before the presentations were made, Ian Bateman said that the jury had no
major problems during the day and had seen a good variety of work with some
good photography but some that was erratic. On the audio side there were no
major errors and that they did justice to the sequences. So to the presentation,
which was made by Ian's wife Elaine, see Page 25 for the full list of results.
After a day that had gone by all too quick the audience and the jury were
nearly in agreement so it only fell to Howard Gregory to thank the jury and all
the helpers who had made this a successful day and wish everyone a safe
journey home and he could now cancel plan C!
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