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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Henry Moore: Recollections of a Yorkshire Childhood
From solitary Idle Rock to recumbent sculptured stone, from terraced house and pit shaft to Sheep Piece, a national treasure in the making.
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Overview
In this late documentary focusing on his schooldays, Henry Moore reminisces about the influences of his parents and teachers, and of Castleford, the place of his early imagination. He speaks with warmth for his hard-working mother and self-taught father, and of two of his art teachers. Moore’s insightful stories of his early days are accompanied by film of a boy representing Moore in his wanderings around the industrial and country landscape of his childhood and youth.
As the most filmed and televised artist of his generation, Henry Moore came to be representative of art for the post-war period. He was first filmed by the BBC as early as 1937 and continued to be seen as late as 1984 when he was interviewed by Tyne Tees. In between times he appeared on a great many programmes, including both Monitor and Face to Face in 1960, a Bernard Levin interview in 1983, and a sextet of BBC documentaries ranging from 1951 to 1978, by filmmaker John Read. He was also prominent in two iconic TV documentary series, Civilisation (1969) and The Ascent of Man (1973). Now there is a clinic, a square and a school named after him in Castleford, as well as the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
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