The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Restless Sunday
A young man rambles in his winklepickers in rundown Leeds brooding on the ennui of a 1960s Sunday, and on his disillusionment with religion.
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Overview
This is one of several award winning films made by Bill Davison over a five year period; this one winning the IAC best film of 1967. It shows a young man wandering around derelict areas of Leeds, passing billboards with Christian messages, before eventually returning to his Quarry Hill flat. As he does so he reflects, through an inner monologue, on the boredom of Sundays, before it became a day of shopping, and his sense of the hollowness of the way Christianity presents itself.
Bill Davison started making films in his teens with his father’s 8mm camera, before receiving his own higher spec Bolex 8mm camera on his 21st birthday. Working all his life in local government finance, Bill made a series of award winning films, starting with Restless Sunday, and including The Terross Happening (1968), The Void (1970), Eclipse (1972), Zenith (1973), In God's Name (1974) and Sanctum (1975). The Movie Maker – for whom Bill wrote a regular column – Ten Best were premiered at the National Film Theatre, and shown around the country. Through these Bill got to meet Ned Sherrin, Joan Bakewell, and even James Stewart. Bill even had a monthly column in Movie Maker, 'Bill Davison's Bootlace Cinema'.
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