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The locally produced
DVD "Over Our Dead Bodies" has scooped an
international award for the Home Video
that made the best use of archive footage
in 2009. The producer and founder of the
Stewkley Film Archive, villager John
Flewin, knew his production, telling the
story of the Third London Airport campaign
of 40 years ago, was among the three
nominations for the award when he attended
the glittering awards ceremony in London,
on Tuesday (April 27).
It was not until
after clips from the three nominated
productions -- the other two were from
America -- had been played on the big
screens, that the announcement of the
winner came from veteran tv producer Lord
David Puttnam. "It was a pretty amazing
moment," John Flewin now recalls.
Judging in the
category, for which seven productions were
submitted, had been by a panel of five
experts from the archive and stock footage
industry. Apparently, their decision was
unanimous.
Officially, the
award was for "The Best Use of Footage in
a Home Video Release" produced and
reaching the retail market last year. The
seven nominations included the two from
the USA, one from Germany and four from
the UK, including one from the BBC,
produced from its natural history
archives.
The award was one of
14 announced on the night in an awards
programme run by footage trade
organisation FOCAL International (The
Federation of Commercial Audiovisual
Libraries), which celebrated 25 years
since its formation on the same night. The
annual awards are sponsored by the AP
Archive, the film and video licensing arm
of the Associated Press, and the
individual award was sponsored by the
licensing department of the French
national film and television archive INA,
which claims the world's largest library
of digitised motion imagery.
Among the array of
personalities involved in receiving or
presenting awards on the night were South
Bank show host (Lord) Melvyn Bragg, and
legandary American film director Martin
Scorsese.
The main content of
the DVD is a 55-minute production telling
the story of the campaign to stop
Britain's biggest airport being built
locally, a plan being seriously considered
by Government in the late 1960s. It would
have meant the total destruction of the
villages and communities of Cublington,
Aston Abbotts, Stewkley, Soulbury, and
Dunton, with the eviction of thousands
from their homes. Leighton Buzzard and
Aylesbury would have become extended
dormitory towns, and Milton Keynes would
have been a different kind of city.
Film for the
production came from three local
filmmakers of the time, the late Tony
Greenslade of Stewkley, the late Jeremy
Smith-Cressell of Drayton Parslow and
Bernard Osborn, then village shop keeper
at Aston Abbots. Additional footage was
licensed from the BBC Archive, and one
clip of the first local demonstration, in
Stewkley in 1969, was obtained from the
East Anglian Film Archive in
Norwich.
More film from the
Tony Greenslade collection and other
sources, film and video of Stewkley
happenings over the last 45 years,
recently played to a packed house at
Stewkley Village Hall, and more imagery is
being unearthed as the ambitions of the
Stewkley Film Archive become more widely
known.
John Flewin who says
he is heading for retirement after 40
years in the television and archive
footage business sees the Stewkley Film
Archive as a retirement project. "The aim
is not just to locate and preserve the
film and video for posterity. The main aim
is to allow as many people as possible to
see and enjoy material that has often lain
dormant in storage for many years. Seeing
it on the big screen, or on home
televisions, provides a vision of our past
and an opportunity to learn, or remember,
people and events which are now part of
our heritage."
He adds: " The award
has given me encouragement to build
further on what has been achieved to date.
I hope also that it may inspire other
towns and villages to start thinking more
about their own visual heritage, seeking
out and preserving films and photos before
they are lost forever."
Some 500 copies of
the DVD were produced. Most have sold, but
a few are still available and copies can
be purchased on-line at
www.stewkleyfilms.org. A small amount of
stock is also held at Harveys of Stewkley;
at Buzzard Books in High Street Mews,
Leighton Buzzard; and in the free-entry
shop at the Buckinghamshire County Museum
at Aylesbury.
end
More photos are
available to download here
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