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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Leeds Gala
Variety is the name of the game at the Leeds Gala, with wrestling, beauty queens, the Red Devils sky-diving, and the band of the Dragoon Guards.
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Overview
The summer of 1968 saw the birth of the rock festival – with Woodstock, the first Isle of Wight Festival and first free Hyde Park Concert. But in Roundhay Park in Leeds it’s the more traditional fare of water-skiing, parachuting, a performance by the Jean Pierce School of Dancing, and Queen of Queens Beauty Competition. All is captured by Leeds’ maverick filmmaker Alan Sidi in his own Sidimascope, who also provides a droll commentary, using his own Cine-Synch machine.
Alan Sidi was the inspirational force behind many of the films of Leeds Mercury Movie Makers, as well as over a hundred of his own. As a self-employed engineer, Alan was also the most technically able, inventing his own Cine-Synch machine in the 1960s enabling sound to be added in synchronisation with 16 mm film, and devising his own wide-screen film format, Sidimascope. Roundhay Park used to host Leeds Children's Day, one of the biggest festivals of youth staged in Britain, which ran from 1922 until 1963. It isn’t sure in what years the Leeds Gala, which was also closely associated with the Yorkshire Post, was held.
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