National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales preserves and celebrates the sound and moving image heritage of Wales, making it accessible to a wide range of users for enjoyment and learning. Its film collection reflects every aspect of the nation’s social, cultural and working life across the 20th century, giving a fascinating insight into Welsh filmmaking, both amateur and professional.
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College "Rag" - Friday, March 2nd, 1923 - Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth’s university students put on a carnival show for the hundreds of who have turned out to watch. The fun parade includes, oddly, a group dressed as the Ku Klux Klan.
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Overview
Aberystwyth university students let off steam, parading about the streets in a variety of carnival costumes and vehicles, aiming to amuse the spectators - townspeople and fellow students who have turned out in their hundreds - and to raise money for charity. The parade includes a group wearing over-sized stovepipe hats and masks, a Rudolf Valentino, a Tutankhamen and, disturbingly, a collection of people dressed up as Ku Klux Klan members, both on foot and on horseback.
Those captured on camera during the carnival revels would have gone along to Aberystwyth’s Palladium cinema to see themselves and their friends on the big screen. The footage was shot by a son of film pioneer Arthur Cheetham who owned cinemas also in Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and Manchester. The Tutankhamen costumes would have been very topical, the tomb having been opened in 1922. It is harder to account for the Ku Klux Klan outfits. D W Griffiths’ film, ‘Birth of a Nation’ – which featured the Klan favourably - was premiered in Britain in 1915. Had the students recently viewed it? Given that one of their group wears a square rather than a pointed head-dress and one looks like a snowman, is there an element of poking fun?
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