This film is part of Free

Holiday in Catalonia and Beach Scenes

Catalonia is one of the destinations in Lewis Rosenberg's original home-movie which features beaches, bullfights and Barcelona

Home movie 1950 12 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for Screen Archive South East

Overview

This holiday home-movie, by Lewis Rosenberg, shows scenes of 1950s Catalonia - starting with a bull-run followed by beach scenes showing Lewis and his mates larking about in their birthday suits. Back in London we see a woman before and after she's had her baby. Returning to Barcelona we see street-scenes, outdoor cafés and trams. A gruesome bullfight follows before we end at a coastal fishing village where Lewis and his friends relax with their Spanish friends.

Lewis Rosenberg was born in London in 1906 to immigrant working class Polish Jewish parents. In his twenties he bought his first 9.5mm cine camera and, despite a lack of formal training, took it with him when he went on camping holidays with his friends. In this film from the 1950s, Lewis and his friends are seen visiting Catalonia and its capital, Barcelona. As they considered themselves communists or socialists in their youth and were also connected with voluntary movements assisting Basque refugees in Britain, it’s not known whether the visit also involved meeting former left-wing comrades, now living under the Franco regime. In January 2012 bullfighting was banned throughout Catalonia.