East Anglian Film Archive online

The East Anglian Film Archive has rolled out it's online archive HERE .
I've just been watching a great half-hour of original footage taken at the USAAF Air Depot at Honington.

The East Anglian Film Archive, the first Regional Film Archive in England, was established in 1976 as an educational resource for the future by its visionary first Director, David Cleveland, who ran it until his retirement in 2004.
Since 1984 the Archive has been owned and operated by the University of East Anglia, Norwich (UEA), as a not for profit research and public access resource. In 2003 the Archive moved to the new £7.5m Archive Centre at County Hall, Norwich, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Norfolk County Council and UEA. The Archive Centre is also the home of the Norfolk Record Office, the first major archive in England to be awarded ‘Designation’ status by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council in 2005.
The collection comprises about 12,000 hours of film and up to 30,000 hours of videotape. The content mainly relates to the East of England region (Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk). It also includes collections of national and international scope. All of the material is intended to be for educational and cultural use.

Most of the material is not owned by UEA and, therefore, it cannot be used for commercial purposes. The biggest collection, that of Anglia Television (about 7,500 hours of film and 15,000 hours of videotape), is owned by ITV plc and the second biggest is owned by the BBC (about 1,000 hours of film and 6,500 hours of videotape). The film library of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers (400 hours) is the third major collection on deposit at the Archive. All the other films (about 3,000 hours) are in 700 individual collections from hundreds of individuals, families, companies and organisations. These collections range in size from a single item to 100 hours.
The Archive’s thousands of films and videotapes are kept in optimum storage conditions in temperature and humidity controlled vaults. The staff team - sometimes as many as 30 people, varying in number according to the availability of project funding - has undertaken a wide range of activities including cataloguing, conservation, public access services, footage sales and technical services for producers. However, due to the current economic climate, the Archive will have just two full time staff from January 2012 so its activities will be limited.

The Archive is funded by the University of East Anglia. This has been supplemented from time to time by fixed-term grants from organisations including the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The Archive and UEA’s School of Film and Television Studies jointly taught the UK’s only MA degree in Film and Television Archiving, an internationally respected course established in 1990 which ran until 2011. Some 150 alumni from this prestigious course are working in film archives and libraries all over the world. The University has plans to re-introduce this MA in 2013.
In November 2011 the Archive completed a major cataloguing and digitisation programme designed to enable far wider access to its holdings by the people of the East of England, and further afield.

Nice find Paul. That's going to keep a few people happy for quite a while.

Some fantastic stuff to be found. To save people searching here is a list and links to the airfield related films I've found so far (probably missed a few).

Coltishall :

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/209623

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/204879

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/110556

Duxford

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/11082

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/139135

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/219312

Hardwick

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/1009

Honington

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/805

Luton Airport

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/6527

Marham

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/11012

Mildenhall

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/615

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/1718

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/214515

Rackheath

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/1042

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/5510

Raydon

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/933

Seething

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/1339

Thorpe Abbotts

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/226537

Wattisham

www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/113827

Enjoy !

While killing time waiting for a delivery this afternoon I looked more closely at the driving sequence in the Honington film.
The next clip shows a Chevrolet bomb truck with the markings of the 555th Bomb Squadron coming through the shot, so I wondered if they were in chronological order.

Sure enough, cross-checked via the wonders of Streetview, the route filmed is indeed RAF Honington (Good views of a pillbox, various signs and sentry posts) to Great Ashfield, via Honington village, Ixworth (nice shot of an unrecorded pillbox at the road junction), Stowlangtoft and Hunsdon.
I'll take my anorak off now...

Great link..

I've been watching the King's Lynn Home Guard 1940-45 video, lots of lovely details (some great shots of Blacker Bombard drills). Cross-referencing a scene of target shooting with other sources I've been able to identify and locate a 550-yard rifle range about 2.5 miles west of RAF Marham in Shouldham Warren. Recent felling shown on Google Earth clearly shows the butts and the 250/350-yard firing lines were revealed c.2006. Walking boots time.

You bet just watched the two films on Rackheath magic ! will watch the rest tomorrow .
Great find Paul .

Regards ,
Alan.

P wrote:

Sure enough, cross-checked via the wonders of Streetview, the route filmed is indeed RAF Honington (Good views of a pillbox, various signs and sentry posts) to Great Ashfield, via Honington village, Ixworth (nice shot of an unrecorded pillbox at the road junction), Stowlangtoft and Hunsdon.
I'll take my anorak off now...

Eh?......my internet radar just bleeped when the word Hunsdon was typed out, false alarm though, the village should read as Hundon

Hundon is next to Stradishall Denis

My apologies Denis, I meant to type Hunston.

Paul, I think you actually meant to type Hunsdon...

It's a splendid collection. By the way, for those old enough to remember him, check out the EAFA's former boss, David Cleveland. He was 'the mad professor' in BBC's 'Vision On' programme 40-odd years ago.

Some of the material has already been seen - for example, in Roger Freeman's 'GIs in East Anglia' video; and other footage (mostly 100BG) has been used at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Savannah since its inception. But most of it's rarely shown, and full marks to the EAFA for releasing it.