This film is part of Free
Brighton Arts Festival
Behind the scenes at the very first Brighton Festival
Overview
An eye-opening dispatch from the very first Brighton Festival for overseas audiences. Reporter Sue Donovan - looking ever-so 60s in a figure-hugging, op-art mini-dress - presents a whirlwind survey of festival highlights, from an exhibition of concrete poetry to a 'symposium of Hogarth's England' by students from the College of Art and a 'happening' in which children enact scenes from Lord of the Flies. Plus there's interviews with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Dame Flora Robson.
A psychedelic selection of kinetic art and an immersive video 'dream machine' are reminders that the Festival arrived just weeks before the Beatles' Sgt Pepper LP kickstarted Britain's very own Summer of Love. The film was produced for the Central Office of Information's fortnightly British Calendar series, one of a number of 'cinemagazines' presenting stories on Britain and the Commonwealth for audiences overseas.
