YEOVIL NEWS: Search is on for old cine films of town’s entertainment days

THE search is on for old cine films of life around Yeovil - particularly about anything that touches on entertainment in the town - for a very unusual project.

Yeovil's entertainment centres have a long history. The Octagon Theatre is now over 40-years-old and its predecessors, the old Town Hall and the Assembly Rooms, hosted shows long before that.

As well as professional acts, local people have been taking to the boards for a very long time with Yeovil Amateur Operatic Society over 100-years-old.

Windrose Rural Media Trust is well known for its many projects that use video, sound recording and old films to involve and delight communities in Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire.

Its large archive of old movie films of local life, saved over the last 31 years, has been especially popular and has drawn audiences of many thousands to shows.

The Octagon, Windrose and the operatic society have joined forces in a project funded by the Heritage Lottery fund. This will include helping to create an archive for the Octagon covering the history of local entertainments and capturing people's memories.

Windrose will be recording on video the recollections of performers, backstage staff, volunteers and regular audience members. It will also train others involved with the theatre and the Operatic Society to do similar work, so that history can go one being recorded after the end of the project.

Young people from WestfieldAcademy in Yeovil will be exploring traditional music from the area and, it is hoped, creating new songs about the world of the theatre.

Somerset Heritage Centre is backing up the project with its expertise in archiving.

The whole project comes together next June in a show and exhibition at the Octagon. The show will weave together live performances by the operatic society, recalling its earliest days, and by the Westfield students, together with the memories of local people recorded on video and, crucially, old films of life and leisure in Yeovil.

Trevor Bailey of Windrose, said: “We have some really interesting and lively films of Yeovil in our collection, dating from the 1930s onwards, and have recently turned up some old television items from the 1960s.

“We have, though, never carried out a proper search for films in the area. We do need to find more films to make the show a really rich experience and to provide an archive that can be drawn upon many times for the pleasure of local people in the future.

“It is very important that cine films should be saved and properly preserved. They can deteriorate or be damaged or lost so easily.

“We can arrange for relevant films to be copied onto a modern digital medium and for the originals to be stored under temperature and humidity controlled conditions at Somerset Heritage Centre. The films remain the property of the original owners and we do nothing without their permission.

“We simply ask to be allowed to use copies of them in our projects, including our shows which delight an enormous number of people. Apart from the wider benefits, getting the films properly copied allows the owners to see and enjoy them again.”

Windrose is looking for any films, amateur or professional, of life in Yeovil and area. In particular, of course, it would like to find anything that relates to entertainment and social life.

Trevor added: “It would be really good to find something about the shows and other events that went on around the old venues, before the Octagon was built and anything about the earliest days of the Octagon, when it was the Johnson Hall, or of the efforts to get it built would also be great.”

As well as films, the project also needs still photographs, documents and memorabilia about entertainment in Yeovil.

If you have or know of cine films or other material that may help the project, please get in touch with: Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ. Alternatively email tbailey352@btinternet.com or phone 01747-840750.

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