London’s Screen Archives enables Londoners see their past come alive on film. Managed by Film London, we are a unique network of historic film collections that cares for, collects and screens heritage film across the city. Together we preserve London’s rich film heritage from feature films to home movies, public information films, newsreels, and records of the capital’s many different industries.
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Watts Family Films: Christmas 1967, Tooting (1967)
A jolly Christmas day in Tooting is followed by several shots of Christmas lights, cinemas and nightclubs in the West End.
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Overview
There’s an extremely good-natured tone to this family film of Christmas lunch in Tooting, with young and old members of the family fooling around for the camera, dancing, swapping presents and hitting the bottle. Includes some great interior shots, and is followed by several fascinating scenes of neon-lit London, featuring Piccadilly Circus, Christmas lights, nightclubs and cinema frontages, including The Wunder-Bar, which promises Alpine food and dancing.
This was not a typically English Christmas. The film was shot at the Camenzuli family home in Totterdown Street, Tooting, where the Camenzulis moved in the late 1950s having been forced into exile from Alexandria, Egypt. The Camenzulis were of Maltese extraction and during the Suez crisis, the small Maltese-Egyptian community was put into exile by President Nasser. Many, like the Camenzulis, ended in South London. This film therefore captures an immigrant Christmas, with just one Englishman present, Graham Watts, who married Daisy Camenzuli the previous year. It’s Graham who can be seen pretending to unzip his wife’s dress early in the film, to general hilarity.
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