HPPH’s visit to the Yorkshire Film Archive

Something that the staff at Yorkshire Film Archive are passionate about is that ordinary, everyday life is, in fact, extraordinary. We might think that the way we work, eat, play and move about our community in day-to-day life is mundane, but to people of the future it will be distinct, unusual and historic evidence of a different way of life. That is, if people of the future can see it. So, the Yorkshire Film Archive have an important task of preserving, cataloguing and digitising their immense collection of moving images, as well as acquiring new footage from our region that will be meaningful to future generations.

There is a tendency to think that films we see on the big screen are more valuable than home videos we make ourselves, but to social historians and everyday people of the future, your family party might be considered gold – even more so than the latest Scorsese film. You never know what might be considered extraordinary, so why not donate your footage to the Yorkshire Film Archive?

Another assumption that can put people off donating their more contemporary videos is the idea of the permanence of digital content because it’s backed up on the cloud and shared on your social media accounts. The fragility of physical film is more tangible as you can see mould, discolouration or smell vinegar as it decays. However, digital videos are at risk of being lost too and a lot of thinking is happening at the Yorkshire Film Archive about the best ways of acquiring and storing digital films.

Another challenge the Yorkshire Film Archive have is making their mass of media meaningfully available to the public. We were impressed that, despite being such a small team, there’s great expertise amongst them and they’re creative in their approach. For example, recently they’ve worked on an interesting series of films, produced in-house by their talented video editor. To create these films, they magpie from some of their most interesting treasures found over the years to make people think and raise questions about important social issues. You might have seen some of these films at our recent free Social Cinema screenings. If not, you can watch Nature Matters, Cost of Living and Born a Rebel online.

We’re proud to have partnered with the Yorkshire Film Archive on another meaningful project which makes use of archive footage – Memory Bank: Leeds. Memory Bank is an award-winning series of DVD resource packs developed in partnership with healthcare professionals, older people, carers, and families. It uses carefully curated archive film footage from across the decades to connect the past with the present and help rediscover memories. We partnered with the Yorkshire Film Archive to develop a new edition: Memory Bank: Leeds, with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. You can learn more about the project and how to get a free copy of the DVD, here.

We’re excited to see what the Yorkshire Film Archive will go on to do next and to work with them in the future. Watch this space!

In the meantime, if you’d like to support the Yorkshire Film Archive, you can donate film footage or money to help their work. Find out more on their website.