The Lost World Of Mitchell & Kenyon

[Foxbat]

I don't know if anybody else is watching this series on BBC2 but I'm finding it utterly fascinating. For the uninitiated, it's a series based around 800 short films found during the renovation of a shop in England. They were filmed by Mitchell and Kenyon around the beginning of the 20th century and chronicle life as it was then. It's like a window into the past - not looking at great world events or wars but the lives of ordinary folk at work and at play. We see society as it once was against a backdrop that is in many cases long gone and almost forgotten.

It shows us how important a part in the preservation of our past the moving image can play. Worth a look if, like me, you have a love of old film

 

[littlemissattitude]

Wish they'd show that here in the States. It sounds absolutely fascinating, both from the point of view of being interested in film and from an historical and anthropological point of view. Perhaps PBS will pick it up sometime.

 

[Foxbat]

If you get the chance to see it, I think you will find it most interesting. Here's an example of the kind of scene you get: footage of hundreds of people with dirty, smiling faces leaving the mills after a hard day's work (their clothes covered in various oils) ....and the narrator explains that both life expectancy and male fertility were extremely low due to these oils being absorbed into the body.

Harsher times that make us remember that often our own complaints are but nothing compared to how things used to be.