Screen Archive South East is a public sector moving image archive serving the South East of England. The archive's collections of magic lantern slides, films, videos and associated materials capture the many varied aspects of life, work and creativity from the early days of screen history to the present day and serve as a rich and invaluable historical resource.
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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
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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.
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