One Dartington magazine feature article, October 2009

Dartington is on the edge of a very tense and exciting moment in film history, the lights are dimmed, the reels are spinning, the curtains are gliding back — the only question is, when the film starts rolling just what are we going to see?

Will it be rare colour film footage of the Elmhirst family taken as early as the 1930s? Will it be the first ever documentary film made of the Galapagos Islands shot by Richard Leacock, the inventor of the fly on the wall documentary? Or could it be one of the many famous artists based at Dartington over the last 85 years, such as theatre pioneer Michael Chekhov, poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, choreographer Rudolph Von Laban or the German dance group Ballet Jooss performing in the Tiltyard?

Or perhaps we will find something even more shocking… perhaps when the curtains roll back there will be nothing left to see at all.

The world of cinema is in crisis. As you read this article, millions of hours of important film footage from the late 19th and 20th century is about to reach its sell by date and disintegrate forever. On the endangered list is the recently reclaimed Dartington film archive (hidden for 15 years in the dusty vaults of the Plymouth-based South West Film and Television Archive). The UK Film Council are taking immediate action and, with the help of a £24 million grant from the National Lottery, have developed a two year strategy to save, preserve and make public the nation’s film heritage. They are being supported in the battle by a white knight in binary clothing — the arrival of accessible digital technology which has made restoration and repair not only possible but preferable. Now for the first time in history thousands of hours of rare film footage can be restored and made available online so the general public will be able to tap into this unique resource without even leaving their bedrooms.

The Dartington Film Archive

The Dartington Film Archive, which consists of around 200 hours of cine-film and 500 hours of VHS, dates back to the early 1930s and can be divided into three main areas; the Elmhirst Family Films, documentaries made by the Dartington Hall Film Unit and footage of Dartington activities, which include famous artists developing formative pieces of work on the estate.

The actual value and significance of the film archive is only just being realised, not only to Dartington and the local community but also to the world.

Heather McIntyre, General Manager of the Dartington Archive and Collection, said, “It’s incredibly exciting, each film reveals another vital piece of the Dartington jigsaw and there is still 80% of the collection yet to be seen. When you consider how many famous people make up Dartington’s history and how many new ideas and movements have started here this collection could easily contain historical documentation of international importance.”

The Family Movies

The Elmhirst family films make up a key part of the Dartington legacy as they provide a unique insight into this extraordinary family and their pioneering spirit. From a technical point of view, the discovery of colour film dating back to the 1930s would be rare enough in Hollywood terms but when it features a home movie of the family during a boating holiday it only goes to show just how technologically progressive the Elmhirsts really were.

Other footage includes the complete rebuilding of the Dartington Hall Estate with construction workers in flat caps and braces carrying tiles on their heads as they skilfully build the roof of the Great Hall. Members of the Dartington community past and present will be delighted to spot older relatives and even their younger selves in many of the films, including a full-colour account of Dartington Foundation Day taken in the 1940s.

The Dartington Film Unit

The real jewel in the Dartington Film Archive is the work of the Dartington Hall Film Unit set up by William Hunter in 1934 as part of Dartington Hall School. The Film Unit was one of the first of its kind and played a key part in the history of documentary filmmaking in the UK. It trained many early documentary filmmakers, including Richard Leacock, who went on to invent the fly on the wall documentary. It was Leacock who teamed up with teacher and ornithologist David Lack, to travel to the Galapagos Islands to document groundbreaking theories on Darwin. The Galapagos film in its original form is arguably the most exciting and scientifically important footage in the collection.

The Film Unit also undertook government commissions from the Ministry of Information to create several educational series for schools with the intention of documenting regional life and industry. Dartington was a major employer in the locality at the time and thanks to the Elmhirsts’ commitment to rural regeneration, child-centred education and the community, it had its pick of agriculture and food production projects to film along with the many events and imaginings of Dartington Hall School. One of the most interesting examples of this type of footage is a complete illustration of building techniques from the time, shown by the now nationally renowned Staverton builders.

Outside the estate the Film Unit captured some increasingly valuable regional footage taken in Exeter during the Blitz and there is even film of the Elmhirsts beginning their rural regeneration project in India.

Artists and Individuals

Due to Dorothy’s love of the creative arts and the strong influence of her daughter, the famous Oscar winning actress Beatrice Straight, Dartington became the home and hang out for some of the most formative arts practitioners of the day including American abstract expressionist Mark Tobey, musician John Cage, German choreographer Kurt Jooss with his dance group Ballet Jooss, Hungarian choreographer Rudolph von Laban, dancer Martha Graham and Russian actor and theatre educationist Michael Chekhov. There is also some highly entertaining footage of Beatrice Straight performing in the Barn Theatre. When Anatoly Smelianski, the Director of the Moscow Arts Theatre, visited Dartington last year he said the Chekhov footage alone was essential to Russian cultural heritage.

Between the Moor and the Sea

In order to make the best use of the archive Dartington is currently planning a pilot project called ‘Between the Moor and the Sea’ which will use 20 hours of key footage to pilot the processes needed to take the original film footage right through from initial cleaning to full online digital access. These processes will then be rolled out for the whole of the film collection. It currently costs around £500 to restore and digitise a single hour of film so the whole collection requires a minimum of £200,000 before it can be successfully restored and made accessible.

The £24 million Lottery grant might seem like the answer to Dartington’s prayers but half the money has already been earmarked for the British Film Institute (BFI) while the rest is being distributed to hundreds of collections across the UK. In the South West, the Dartington film archive has been recognised as one of four regionally significant collections and has been awarded a grant of £20,000 from the Digital Film Access Fund – a figure that allows the charity to save the most vulnerable film stock but still leaves it a long way off its main ambition – to make all the footage available as a publicly accessible education resource and to use it new and innovative ways.

Colin Orr, Producer of New Media at Dartington, said “Dartington is seeking support to repair, digitise and make available the majority of the collection so the public can access the films online and view any time period, performance or person – just by making a key word search. The eventual aim would be to add contemporary film to this catalogue so that people could input a subject like apple pressing and be able to watch the entire catalogue on this area of agriculture from 1930 to today.”

To deliver this pioneering project the charity not only needs financial support but the keen eyes and memories of the local community to help identify many of the people and events featured in the collection. For this reason the Barn Cinema is setting up community screenings of the films which will be running at periodic intervals throughout the year and will be advertised on www.dartington.org. As well as community screenings, parts of the collection will also be shown before public film showings with the Galapagos film being screened before ‘Creation’ from the 16th to the 22nd October. For dates of future community screenings keep watching the website!

Even though the future of the Dartington Film Archive is still as uncertain as its content – the only thing of which we can be sure is the incredible richness of this resource as an education tool with the power to inspire and influence historians, scientists, agriculturalists, creative practitioners and future documentary filmmakers. With such a magical and influential piece of history in its hands, Dartington is prepared to do everything in its power to restore the collection to much more than its former glory and project it up on screen for the whole world to see.

Support this work

If you would like to support the recovery and restoration of the Dartington Film Archive and help us on our journey to create an online interactive archive, please contact the Fundraising team on 01803 847008.

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