This film is part of Free

The House with the Golden Windows

There’s no place like home … a beautiful Kodachrome tale of a childhood quest.

Amateur film 1946 7 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for North East Film Archive

Overview

In the aftermath of World War Two, a Newcastle cine club resumed their fiction filmmaking activities with this adaptation of an American fable 'for young and old', transposed to a Northumbrian valley. ‘Golden Windows’ is an endearing Kodachrome evocation of childhood innocence and aspiration.

With Kodachrome film once more on the market after wartime restrictions, the Newcastle and District Amateur Cinematographers’ Association, one of the earliest British cine clubs, founded by James Cameron and friends in 1927, chose to make this short in colour. The film was inspired by a story first published by American author Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards in the 1920s. Illustrations are by J. Cantley McKendrick, chairman and treasurer of the Newcastle Society of Artists and the manager of Martins Bank in Gosforth, Newcastle.