Wright Around the World The Thirties in Colour


Wright Around the World

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In the 1930s

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film exploded into colour.

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New photographic technologies really came of age

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enabling film-makers to capture the vibrant hues of our world.

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Colour film was expensive.

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But money was no object for the American steel magnate

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Harry Wright and his brother, Bolling.

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They were wealthy enough to indulge their twin passions

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for travel and film-making.

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Throughout the Thirties they shot or acquired many films

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that record the world at a pivotal moment in history.

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It was the golden age of ocean travel

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when those with the means could escape the Great Depression

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and take their cameras to the ends of the Earth.

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Early colour films in the Wright collection, many of which

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have never been broadcast before,

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take us to Paradise Islands in the Pacific...

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..Europe as it braces itself for war...

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..and America, as it looks forward to a brighter future.

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But the sea,

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the rich man's playground, would be turned into a battleground

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as the places and people captured in the Wright brothers' films

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became embroiled in the bloodiest war in history.

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Born in 1876,

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Harry Wright was the son of a tobacco producer from Virginia.

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But in the early years of the 20th century

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Harry and his younger brother, Bolling, created a business empire

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of their own by establishing a steel business in Mexico City.

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Soon they were millionaires.

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The Wright brothers' wealth allowed them to indulge

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in what was the very expensive hobby of amateur film making.

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They acquired lightweight, portable, 16mm film cameras

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and loaded them with new Kodachrome film,

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a technology that allowed them to capture the world in colour.

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Both men installed private cinemas in their own homes

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where they would entertain guests

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with their treasured film collection.

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They boasted that their 1,500 reels covered every subject

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and featured every country under the sun.

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The Wright brothers' film travelogues contain some

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of the earliest known colour footage of many remote parts of the world.

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From the comfort of their cinema seats guests could be transported

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on ocean voyages to the most intriguing

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and romantic places on Earth.

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On 19th January 1937 the Stella Polaris left New York to begin

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a four-month round-the-world cruise

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which would stop at 38 ports during a journey of 30,000 miles.

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Together with footage from other ocean liners, the Wright collection

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contains film of the entire voyage,

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showing the luxurious surroundings passengers enjoyed on board.

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The Stella Polaris was one of the world's first luxury cruise ships.

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She was very select. 165 passengers with 165 crew, one-to-one ratio.

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She was elegant and beautiful, looked like she should belong to the king

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of Zamboanga or some exotic place. She was just gorgeous.

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This was a grand era of travel in the highest style when the finest

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of service and the best decor and ambience existed

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on these great moving palaces of the sea.

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Carefree and comfortable on board

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passengers embraced the holiday spirit.

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Many seemed oblivious to the fact the world

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they were circumnavigating was in crisis.

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The world of the late 1930s was a world in turmoil, for two reasons.

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The Depression was said to be the worst crisis to afflict

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the world since the Black Death.

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It had torn at the social fabric of the entire world. And there was

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a sense of impending doom because the military dictatorships in Japan

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and in Germany and in Italy were on the move.

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The threat of war was in the air.

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And yet at the same time, while this was going on and perhaps

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BECAUSE it was going on, there were people who were escaping from it.

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People with money who could escape from the Depression,

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who could blot out the prospect of war.

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A cruise on the Stella Polaris cost 2,500, or around two years pay

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for the average working American.

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It was a small fortune but it took you to some of the world's

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most alluring places, including the South Pacific,

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the Dutch East Indies and southern Africa, before heading to Europe.

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To reach the Pacific Ocean she first had to pass

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through the Panama Canal.

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Completed in 1914, this 51-mile channel

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had revolutionised ocean travel.

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The Panama Canal was absolutely vital to a world cruise

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because it opened up the idea that you didn't have to go

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around South America, you could pass through this

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eight-hour passage through a series of three locks which moved you

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from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and this was a wonderful selling point.

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People loved the engineering genius of the Panama Canal.

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People setting out on a world cruise would have the marvellous excitement

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of going through this

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very dramatic scenery and yet reality was catching up with them

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even as they escaped from it, because the Panama Canal

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was a strategic channel and it was at that very moment being widened

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to accommodate the gigantic warships that the Americans were building

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to fend off the menace of Japan and Nazi Germany.

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What we see is the blasting away of the sides of the canal, in order

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to accommodate these huge battleships America was building.

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500 miles west of Panama passengers waded ashore to Cocos Island,

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a place steeped in pirate lore and tales of buried treasure.

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Influenced by representations in books and films from the period,

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many in the West believed the Pacific Islands

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to be an unspoiled paradise.

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The 1930s travellers

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going to the Pacific would have been informed by a series

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of travel narratives which started coming out

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just after the First World War.

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A lot of these were turned into popular films.

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These films extolled the beauties of the South Pacific

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as an unspoilt paradise, there were even theories

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which suggested that the South Pacific was the true Eden, cut off,

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isolated, therefore untouched in a way by Western civilisation.

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Travellers were in a sense trying to get away from the technology

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and the mechanisation of the West.

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They were seeking a simpler life.

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A more unspoilt life.

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But in reality, for over 150 years life in the Pacific Isles had been

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transformed by the presence of Christian missionaries

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and Europe's colonial powers.

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In the Marquesas Islands paradise was already lost.

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The Marquesas were associated with the notion of the fatal impact.

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And the idea of the fatal impact was that Western diseases

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and Western technology had brought destruction to the islands.

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In many cases like the Marquesas,

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there had been great depopulation, early explorers estimated

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there might have been 100,000 people occupying the Marquesas Islands.

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By the 1930s, estimates were there were around 2,000.

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After France colonised the Marquesas in the 19th century

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the indigenous culture was virtually annihilated.

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They banned tattooing, singing and dancing,

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while the Catholic mission stamped out its traditional religion.

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Three days sail from the Marquesas

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lay an island which epitomised the myth and romance of the South Seas.

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Tahiti became famous after the crew of the HMS Bounty mutinied

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shortly after leaving the island in 1789.

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By the mid-1930s, a successful book and film based on the story

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had put the island, or at least a Hollywood image of it, on the map.

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Hollywood constructed the islands

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and the lives of islanders, so I think this is one way

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in which this colour film from this voyage becomes important

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because we're not seeing a Hollywood construction of what islanders do.

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What we are seeing is islanders very much carrying on with their lives

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and they are doing their thing.

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In the capital, Papeete,

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islanders were filmed loading copra.

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Made from dried coconut kernels,

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the product was the mainstay of the Tahitian economy.

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Copra was one of the really, really important crops of French Polynesia

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for many, many years.

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The way it is made is the coconut is cut in half, and then the meat

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is left to dry for about four or five hours,

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just enough that it can be loosened from the shell.

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Then it is cut into small bits. And the oil made from that

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was very important in Europe for candles during the 1800s.

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And after about 1900 it was really important as a cooking oil.

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Since that time copra has declined in its importance,

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we really don't see this in the port of Papeete right now.

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Tourism has since displaced copra production

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as Tahiti's most important economic activity.

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But in the 1930s only a handful of cruise ships visited each year.

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It was a big deal when the boat came.

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The whole town would show up with flowers and things to sell

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and it was a wonderful time.

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Tahitians are known for their really warm welcomes, they are

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known for using music to create an ambience, to set a good tone.

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Dance in Tahiti's for entertainment

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but it's also to reinforce gender roles. What we see

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very clearly is that there is a specific way of dancing for men,

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it's a flapping in and out of the knees in a scissors-like motion.

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And I'm interested in seeing that the women were using the circular

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hip movements here, because oral tradition

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of Tahiti says that in these years women didn't do this,

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they only move their hips side to side

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because otherwise it was considered something good girls didn't do.

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And so I'm kind of happy to put that myth to rest.

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The allure of the dance was so powerful

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that often Westerners joined in.

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Dance in particular was one way in which a tourist could safely

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indulge in the visibility of the so-called native body.

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They were particularly struck by both the sensuality of the movement

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but also the lack of inhibition.

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All of these things, I think, were things that people

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coming from the West felt they weren't able to achieve at home.

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The Stella Polaris continued onwards

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towards one of the areas of the world least familiar to the West.

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The boat anchored at Port Moresby, the capital of what

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is now Papua New Guinea. A former British colony,

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it was administered by its Australian governor, Hubert Murray.

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He was determined to limit the impact of Western values

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on traditional Papuan culture.

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Many people thought he was a very enlightened administrator

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who cared for the Papuans greatly

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but at the same time he carried on from previous administrators

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a series of native regulations

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that really kept the Papuans in their place.

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There was over 50 different native regulations.

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One piece of legislation particularly was about the banning of wearing

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dress on the upper part of the body, which applied to both men and women.

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On the one hand Murray wanted to preserve the culture of these people,

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but the underlying idea was in many ways what we would call today racist,

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because the regulations were really intent on maintaining

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a very clear separation between the Papuan and the white person.

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So I think when we look at these pictures,

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although they look very traditional we have to see them in the context

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of quite extreme laws that prevent the Papuan from doing many things

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that Europeans at the time were allowed.

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But as the film shows, there was one aspect of British culture

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that the people WERE allowed to embrace.

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Yeah, I found it very amusing and odd.

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I first thought it was a kind of set-up,

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for the titillation of the European or American audience

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But actually if one looks at it more closely,

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one realises that these women do know how to play cricket.

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There's a lot of anthropological value to the image

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because although it's been well documented that women

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were playing cricket after the Second World War

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there's been virtually no documentation of this

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prior to that period, so the clip of film offers

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a very interesting insight into village life

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that we actually didn't know that much about.

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The film captures a moment in Papuan society.

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During the Second World War,

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Papuan soldiers fought alongside Allied forces against the Japanese

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as they conducted their campaign in New Guinea.

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When the war was over,

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the Papuans were no longer prepared to submit to colonial rule.

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With the end of Word War Two, the whole situation for the Papuan

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changes tremendously. Their sense of equality with the white people

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becomes ever greater

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and there are moves afoot to increase labour migration,

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economic development and eventually move

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towards self-government and independence.

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On 6th March 1937, the Stella Polaris left the Pacific

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and entered the waters surrounding the Dutch East Indies,

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the country now known as Indonesia.

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She dropped anchor at Bali,

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an island still largely untouched by tourism.

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In the late '30s, it received fewer than 250 visitors per month.

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Today Bali is established as Indonesia's most important

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holiday destination.

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They steamed on to Java, where the Dutch colonialists

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had tried to turn the capital, Jakarta,

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into the Amsterdam of the East by building a network of canals.

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But the canals brought malaria, cholera and dysentery to the city,

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causing tens of thousands of deaths

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among Dutch workers and the local population.

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Nearby was a place that had proven an even greater challenge

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to colonise - Nias, a location described

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in the film's inter-title as "The island of savages in armour."

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Nias had a particularly bad reputation among the Dutch

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as a tough place.

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They'd sent a ship there in the mid 19th century

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and the ship had been stormed by the Niasans and the crew beheaded.

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So this was a... a dangerous place to go.

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The Dutch finally conquered the island completely in 1906

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but 15, 20 years before this film was shot,

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these people were still living the heroic life of warriors.

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Raiding enemy villages, capturing hostages

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and hunting for heads.

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THEY CHANT

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They saw their whole world destroyed

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and then they're asked to put on dances which mimic that world.

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We see the chief in his ceremonial costume.

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But in fact he had very little power by this time because the Dutch

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had taken away most of his powers of patronage and jurisdiction.

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These pictures are quite tragic to me

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because they show people who have lost their world completely.

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All of their values were overturned.

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Everything that they believed was right about the world

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was suddenly wrong. Um, sinful.

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And their heroic warrior ethos was suddenly devalued

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as something terrible and a crime.

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And yet they're standing there in their warrior outfits

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with their guns and not surprisingly they look very sour.

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Who wouldn't?

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Next, the Stella Polaris steamed across the Indian Ocean

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towards South Africa.

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The country had not yet enshrined in law the structures of apartheid

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that would turn it into an international pariah.

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But in practice South Africa was already

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a racially-segregated society,

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as travellers from the Polaris discovered

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when they visited the famous Indian market in Durban.

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This market scene is really very interesting

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because it illustrates many of the tensions

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in Durban society at the time. Behind this benign scene

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are all the social divisions, the white lady buying the flowers

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and looking slightly aloof,

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the Indian flower seller assisted by a black assistant.

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Indians in general were viewed with a great deal of hostility

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by whites in South Africa, in fact in the 1920s there was even

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an attempt by white florists to prevent Indians from selling flowers

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in Durban because they wanted to keep the trade in their hands.

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In the front of this picture are two men

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wearing short trousers and tunics who are evidently house boys.

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They were Zulu men from the famous Zulu kingdom, renowned as warriors,

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not least because they defeated the British in the Anglo-Zulu War

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of 1879, and now they've been transformed

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into not simply domestic servants but house boys,

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and the term "boy" was, of course, applied to African men

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in the service of whites whatever their age.

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The three Zulu women in the picture

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seem to be formally asked to walk into the camera.

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This is not entirely traditional dress.

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From the 19th century, Africans had to come into the city

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with their bodies suitably covered, both because of Victorian scruples

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about the naked body

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and because it suited British textile manufacturers

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to sell their cloth in Africa.

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They've skimmed the surface,

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they went round the edges of the places they visited.

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It's intriguing that this sequence in Port Elizabeth

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seems to be almost the longest of any sequence on South Africa.

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The tourists were obviously fascinated by the snake farm.

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One can't help feeling that their knowledge of Africa

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was really not much better, and perhaps not as good as,

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the image that the first Portuguese voyagers round the coasts of Africa

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would have got. And their maps, for the centre of Africa, had,

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"There be dragons." And for these voyagers too, one can't help feeling

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that the interior of Africa

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and African life was really still the life of darkest Africa.

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In Cape Town, home to the South African parliament,

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the film captured the memorial

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to the industrialist and former prime minister, Cecil Rhodes.

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Rhodes became one of the world's richest men

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through his ruthless control of diamond mines

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and the use of African forced labour.

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He was such an ardent believer in colonialism

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that he claimed he would "annex the planets" if he could.

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In the film, an inter-title describes him

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as the Union of South Africa's "greatest citizen".

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I doubt if many would give him that title today.

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Even in his day, Rhodes was an extremely controversial figure.

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Rhodes, of course, was behind the great expansion of white settlement

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in South Africa.

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He was responsible, really,

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for the development of a migrant labour system on the mines,

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and the very strict control of Africans in closed compounds

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on the diamond mines.

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He was in alliance with the Afrikaner political party in the Cape Colony,

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which supported flogging bills,

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which supported the intensified segregation of Africans.

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We see in this picture Rhodes's home, Groote Schuur.

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When Rhodes died he left his estate to the state

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and the house was occupied by heads of government in South Africa,

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including Nelson Mandela

0:24:490:24:51

when he became the first black president of South Africa in 1994.

0:24:510:24:56

And one really wonders what Rhodes would have made of that!

0:25:010:25:05

After a final stop at Gibraltar, the Stella Polaris headed

0:25:130:25:17

across the Atlantic to complete her circumnavigation of the globe.

0:25:170:25:21

She had scarcely touched Europe

0:25:230:25:25

at what was a critical moment in its history.

0:25:250:25:29

But another film in the Wright collection was shot on the Continent

0:25:290:25:33

just before the Second World War,

0:25:330:25:35

a film produced by Bolling Wright himself.

0:25:350:25:39

In February 1939 Bolling and his family embarked

0:25:390:25:43

on a three-month-long Mediterranean cruise.

0:25:430:25:46

He captured their journey on film, edited it together, and presented it

0:25:480:25:52

under the name of his own production company, Bomar Travels.

0:25:520:25:56

'It is wonderful to see my grandmother and my grandfather

0:25:560:26:00

'and my aunt and uncle looking so expectantly

0:26:000:26:03

'while they're about to go on this Mediterranean cruise,

0:26:030:26:06

'and to see them looking so young and so dapper, and my grandfather'

0:26:060:26:09

smiling a broad smile. And you could just tell they were very excited.

0:26:090:26:14

By 1939, Bolling Wright was wealthy enough to travel the world

0:26:330:26:38

and film his experiences for posterity.

0:26:380:26:41

But life for the Wright family had not always been so comfortable.

0:26:410:26:45

My grandfather was born and raised in Bedford, Virginia.

0:26:470:26:50

They were a fairly well-to-do family,

0:26:500:26:53

but after his father died, then the family hit on hard times.

0:26:530:26:57

The four younger children had to stop going to school at an early age

0:26:570:27:03

and were forced to go to work.

0:27:030:27:06

And I would say that my grandfather was probably 10 or 11 years old

0:27:060:27:10

when this happened, so his formal education ended

0:27:100:27:14

at that point in his life.

0:27:140:27:16

Travelling was very important, particularly for Bolling,

0:27:200:27:24

because it sort of substituted for a lot of the things

0:27:240:27:27

that he wasn't able to learn at school.

0:27:270:27:30

His travelogues have a lot of inter-titles

0:27:300:27:33

with lots of information.

0:27:330:27:35

You feel that he has a need to capture everything,

0:27:350:27:40

every single detail, of every building, of every place.

0:27:400:27:45

So I think there was this need to sort of learn more,

0:27:450:27:49

become more educated, more cultured, through travel.

0:27:490:27:54

Many Americans were doing what the British aristocrats had done

0:27:580:28:01

in the 18th century, going on a grand tour in search of culture.

0:28:010:28:05

And they were looking for an exotic world -

0:28:050:28:09

a world that took them back in time,

0:28:090:28:12

well away from the realities that they knew at home,

0:28:120:28:16

the industrial civilisation of America.

0:28:160:28:19

The Wright family's cruise gave them the opportunity to encounter

0:28:190:28:23

one of North Africa's most intriguing cultures.

0:28:230:28:27

Casablanca was their port of entry into Morocco,

0:28:270:28:31

which was still a French colony.

0:28:310:28:33

The French came to North Africa very much to carry out what they descibed

0:28:410:28:45

as the "mission civilisatrice",

0:28:450:28:48

a sort of obligation similar to the British Empire's obsession

0:28:480:28:51

with the "white man's burden", this idea of Europeans going out

0:28:510:28:55

and improving, if you like, the rest of the world.

0:28:550:28:58

Providing education, better economic circumstances,

0:28:580:29:02

development of all kinds

0:29:020:29:04

to people who couldn't quite achieve that on their own.

0:29:040:29:09

But it's very clear from some of the images we see in the film

0:29:100:29:14

that there was a considerable amount of poverty across North Africa.

0:29:140:29:19

Scenes of deprivation were most apparent

0:29:220:29:24

when the travellers visited the old city of Fez, which Bolling called

0:29:240:29:28

the 'native quarter'.

0:29:280:29:30

What we're actually looking at is an entire medieval city -

0:29:320:29:36

it's hardly just a quarter.

0:29:360:29:37

The French adopted a sort of urban apartheid.

0:29:380:29:42

They created what they tended to describe as a 'cordon sanitaire'

0:29:420:29:46

between their new city and the old city.

0:29:460:29:50

This has sometimes been presented in quite a positive light

0:29:500:29:53

in terms of preserving the architectural heritage of Morocco

0:29:530:29:59

and keeping the old city intact,

0:29:590:30:02

but the other side of it for the people who lived there was also that

0:30:020:30:05

the French didn't want to mix with the locals,

0:30:050:30:09

they saw them as dirty, unhealthy.

0:30:090:30:12

The French colonial city became the hub of political life, economic life,

0:30:120:30:17

social life.

0:30:170:30:18

So as a result the old city was, if you like,

0:30:180:30:21

frozen in time and began to die.

0:30:210:30:23

When the party come to Fez,

0:30:360:30:38

they set their camera up at the gate which is in some ways

0:30:380:30:40

the crossing point between the native and the modern quarters

0:30:400:30:44

and the camera captures in brilliant colour

0:30:440:30:46

all these very interesting faces and distinct costumes

0:30:460:30:50

and people doing strange things.

0:30:500:30:52

So there's a kind of ethnographic quality here,

0:30:520:30:54

a fascination with the exotic.

0:30:540:30:56

And it even when it comes down to the pictures

0:30:560:30:58

that they attempt to take of one young man

0:30:580:31:01

whose hair had captured their attention, they describe him as -

0:31:010:31:04

This little boy thought being filmed

0:31:080:31:10

would keep him from going to heaven,

0:31:100:31:11

because at every opportunity he ducks the gaze of the camera.

0:31:110:31:14

Even today in North Africa, people can feel uncomfortable

0:31:190:31:23

about being photographed or filmed.

0:31:230:31:26

Visitors, particularly Westerners tended to completely disregard.

0:31:260:31:30

They felt as if North Africa and the other countries that they visited

0:31:300:31:34

in North Africa, or the Orient or elsewhere,

0:31:340:31:37

were just there for them to view.

0:31:370:31:40

I think we see it more poignantly with the little girl in Tunisia

0:31:530:31:57

who's standing there, and she doesn't have the confidence to say

0:31:570:32:01

"No, go away" or to walk away.

0:32:010:32:04

She's sort of totally disempowered by the camera.

0:32:040:32:08

This footage really does show how poor a lot of people were.

0:32:110:32:16

You see the tattered clothes with holes,

0:32:160:32:19

the children look dirty, they look unkempt...

0:32:190:32:22

they don't look happy.

0:32:220:32:24

It's a very sad picture really.

0:32:240:32:27

When the nationalist movements began to gather speed across North Africa

0:32:310:32:35

at this period in the 1930s,

0:32:350:32:37

one of the main criticisms of colonialism

0:32:370:32:41

which indigenous people put forward was

0:32:410:32:43

that it had impoverished them,

0:32:430:32:44

that colonialists had come in and taken the wealth of their country,

0:32:440:32:49

exploited the country,

0:32:490:32:50

whilst they themselves had not been given the kind of benefits

0:32:500:32:54

that they might have expected, such as citizenship, education,

0:32:540:32:58

opportunities for employment.

0:32:580:33:00

The only kind of opportunities they had were sort of at the lower levels

0:33:000:33:04

of the administration, or in the army.

0:33:040:33:07

The presence of African troops fascinated Bolling Wright.

0:33:090:33:13

In the capital, Rabat,

0:33:130:33:14

he filmed several men recruited from the French colonies of West Africa.

0:33:140:33:18

These red-clad soldiers actually came from Senegal,

0:33:180:33:22

but they were part of a huge contingent of African soldiers

0:33:220:33:26

that the French drew on in WWII,

0:33:260:33:28

and shortly they were to be fighting the Germans.

0:33:280:33:31

The French needed African recruits for the very simple reason that

0:33:310:33:35

the French suffered the most appalling slaughter in WWI.

0:33:350:33:39

So these African soldiers were going to fight

0:33:390:33:43

for the soul of France in Europe.

0:33:430:33:46

What their involvement did trigger was a strong sense

0:33:470:33:50

that they should be considered as equal.

0:33:500:33:52

Their argument was "if our blood is equal to a Frenchmen's

0:33:520:33:56

"and we can die on the battlefield for France,

0:33:560:33:59

why should we not be granted equal political rights

0:33:590:34:02

"and independence, if we wish it?"

0:34:020:34:04

The movement for independence would gain momentum

0:34:060:34:10

across North Africa after the war.

0:34:100:34:12

But in another Arab land, one under British control,

0:34:120:34:16

the fight for self-determination was well under way.

0:34:160:34:19

Palestine wasn't on the Wright family's itinerary

0:34:220:34:24

but it appears in another film in their collection

0:34:240:34:27

that was also shot in 1939.

0:34:270:34:29

It paints an extraordinary picture of a troubled land.

0:34:300:34:34

The film opens with a musical sequence

0:34:340:34:36

where the music itself is meant to impart a kind of sense of

0:34:360:34:40

bucolic joy and happiness, and peace in our time.

0:34:400:34:43

-NARRATOR ON FILM:

-When springtime comes to Palestine,

0:34:440:34:47

it colours all the contrasts of this ancient country

0:34:470:34:49

and hovers over the walls of ancient Jericho,

0:34:490:34:53

as it did when the Israelites came 3,000 years ago.

0:34:530:34:56

There's the voiceover of a very reassuring English accent

0:34:570:35:04

that tells you that things in Palestine,

0:35:040:35:07

or the Holy Land as he calls it, are as good as they've always been

0:35:070:35:10

since biblical times and very little has changed since.

0:35:100:35:13

The scriptures come to life.

0:35:130:35:16

Jacobs and Davids tend their flock and lead their simple lives.

0:35:160:35:20

What's really striking is the way in which the film maker

0:35:200:35:24

has treated the Palestinian people as extras on a biblical film.

0:35:240:35:29

We see no notion of Palestinian doctors or lawyers or modern people.

0:35:300:35:34

The Palestinians are these vestiges of the biblical past.

0:35:340:35:38

The most extraordinary thing about the film is what it doesn't show.

0:35:420:35:45

Taken in 1939, had the camera been diverted a couple of degrees,

0:35:450:35:50

it would have shown you a Palestine that had been completely destroyed

0:35:500:35:54

by three years of rebellion of the Palestinian Arab community

0:35:540:35:57

against both the Jewish settlers and the British colonial presence.

0:35:570:36:02

Palestine would have been a fractured landscape of roadblocks,

0:36:020:36:06

of search points, of police presence, of military presence.

0:36:060:36:11

There were concentration camps, collective punishments.

0:36:220:36:25

Houses were destroyed.

0:36:250:36:27

Towns had been laid low.

0:36:270:36:29

The country was flooded with British troops.

0:36:320:36:35

It's remarkable that they could film Palestine at this moment,

0:36:350:36:38

without having a single British soldier or policeman in the frame.

0:36:380:36:43

British control of Palestine was cemented in 1920,

0:36:430:36:47

when it was granted mandated powers over the territory

0:36:470:36:51

by the League of Nations.

0:36:510:36:52

By then, the British government had already pledged to create

0:36:520:36:56

a Jewish national home in Palestine.

0:36:560:36:59

Britain had assured the Arab population

0:36:590:37:01

that nothing would be done to disadvantage them.

0:37:010:37:04

But that promise wasn't kept.

0:37:040:37:07

Really across the 1920s and '30s,

0:37:100:37:12

there had been a massive expansion of the Jewish presence in Palestine.

0:37:120:37:17

The Jewish colonies were a source of grievance with Palestinian Arabs,

0:37:210:37:26

who had believed that their lands

0:37:260:37:29

were being taken over by foreign people,

0:37:290:37:32

that there was restriction on their own access to land,

0:37:320:37:36

and this becomes a real source of tension between the two communities.

0:37:360:37:39

The film appears to show both communities working side by side.

0:37:390:37:44

But a close inspection reveals that Arabs and Jews

0:37:440:37:48

never appear in the same shot.

0:37:480:37:50

Man and women, Arab and Jew,

0:37:510:37:55

old and young, here is work for them all

0:37:550:37:57

in raising oranges that grow sweeter and juicier in this famous soil.

0:37:570:38:02

One of the main objectives of this film

0:38:040:38:06

was to serve as a commercial for the Jaffa orange.

0:38:060:38:10

The Palestine Post ran a story

0:38:110:38:12

that there had been a special screening of this film

0:38:120:38:16

attended by British officials

0:38:160:38:18

as well as the officials of the Palestine Citrus Board.

0:38:180:38:22

Clearly, we see who the main protagonists behind the film were.

0:38:220:38:26

So what, at first viewing, comes across

0:38:260:38:29

as a fairly benign portrayal of a peaceful land

0:38:290:38:32

with biblical associations, is actually something quite sinister.

0:38:320:38:35

From the perspective of the British authorities, it is clearly

0:38:350:38:39

a propaganda film that's trying to demonstrate

0:38:390:38:42

that they're in full control of their Palestine mandate.

0:38:420:38:45

For the Jaffa Citrus Board, this is a piece of commercial propaganda.

0:38:450:38:50

It's designed to convince consumers around the world

0:38:500:38:53

that their product was untainted by association

0:38:530:38:56

with the violence of the recent conflict.

0:38:560:38:58

And so what we see is a total disregard of the realities

0:39:020:39:07

of Palestine in 1939,

0:39:070:39:08

in the interests of promoting imperialism and the economy.

0:39:080:39:13

In February 1939, the Wright family were visiting countries

0:39:180:39:22

that were similarly fractured and volatile.

0:39:220:39:24

In their film, signs of trouble in Europe

0:39:260:39:29

are first evident in the Canary islands.

0:39:290:39:32

When the Wrights disembarked here,

0:39:320:39:35

Spain was still embroiled in a bloody civil war.

0:39:350:39:38

It was to Tenerife that General Francisco Franco had been sidelined,

0:39:440:39:48

amid fears that he might plot against the newly elected

0:39:480:39:51

Popular Front government of Spain.

0:39:510:39:53

In July 1936, the man who would become Spain's fascist dictator

0:39:550:39:59

left Tenerife for Spanish Morocco,

0:39:590:40:01

to initiate the military coup

0:40:010:40:03

that would plunge the country into three years of civil war.

0:40:030:40:07

Like all civil wars, the Spanish Civil War was viciously fought,

0:40:100:40:14

it was brutal and Franco was more brutal than I think

0:40:140:40:19

almost anybody else in Spain.

0:40:190:40:21

You had terrible atrocities taking place.

0:40:210:40:26

You had torture, you had massacres and murders.

0:40:260:40:29

It was a cruel and brutal event.

0:40:290:40:32

Conservative estimates suggest

0:40:380:40:41

that in the course of the Spanish Civil War,

0:40:410:40:43

around 350,000 people were killed.

0:40:430:40:46

The Canary Islands were being used both as a recruiting station

0:40:490:40:53

for Franco's side

0:40:530:40:56

and also as a base to treat wounded Spanish soldiers.

0:40:560:40:59

We see patriotic signs, "Viva Franco" and "Arriba Espania",

0:41:010:41:06

celebrating the victory of the authoritarian forces

0:41:060:41:10

in the Spanish Civil War and also showing

0:41:100:41:13

and demonstrating the Canary Island as loyalty for Franco

0:41:130:41:17

and for the new government that's being imposed in Spain.

0:41:170:41:19

One of the most powerful instruments

0:41:220:41:24

of fascist repression was the Guardia Civil.

0:41:240:41:27

We see them with their strange kind of hats which the poet Garcia Lorca

0:41:270:41:33

compared to enamelled coffins -

0:41:330:41:35

obviously a metaphor for their own kind of murderous brutality.

0:41:350:41:39

The dictatorship of Franco crushed the poor, who were very poor indeed.

0:41:460:41:50

The situation in Spain and in the Canary Islands

0:41:500:41:54

was almost medieval in its poverty.

0:41:540:41:57

And the Canary Islands faced a bleak future under the heel of fascism.

0:41:570:42:02

The Wright family's journey took them to another country

0:42:140:42:18

that was being transformed by fascist rule.

0:42:180:42:21

Their contact with Mussolini's Italy began in Rome,

0:42:210:42:25

where, in an ambitious programme of demolition,

0:42:250:42:28

construction and renovation,

0:42:280:42:30

the Eternal City was being rebuilt

0:42:300:42:33

to embrace modernity and to glorify the past.

0:42:330:42:36

Rome was to be the stage on which the dictator

0:42:380:42:41

would attempt to showcase the power of fascism.

0:42:410:42:45

MUSSOLINI ADDRESSES CROWD

0:42:450:42:49

Mussolini seeks to legitimate his fascist rule

0:42:490:42:55

by connecting and identifying himself as a Roman Emperor

0:42:550:42:59

and the Italian fascist regime

0:42:590:43:02

as the legitimate heirs of Roman civilisation.

0:43:020:43:06

As far as Mussolini was concerned, he was the master of Rome.

0:43:100:43:14

And he wanted to create a kind of Mussolini-like Rome of his own.

0:43:140:43:18

And so we see his main creation, which was to emulate

0:43:180:43:23

the Forum of ancient Rome, and this Forum was a great open space.

0:43:230:43:27

It was a place where people gathered,

0:43:270:43:30

and it was surrounded by marble statues showing the human form,

0:43:300:43:33

the fascist form, which Mussolini himself often showed,

0:43:330:43:37

because he liked to strip off his shirt

0:43:370:43:40

and to take part in sporting activities and athletic displays

0:43:400:43:44

and horsemanship and sword fighting and all that,

0:43:440:43:47

to show off his own virility and vigour.

0:43:470:43:49

Mussolini constantly came back to himself with this phrase

0:43:510:43:56

that he loved, "Duce, Duce, Duce". CROWD CHANTS

0:43:560:44:00

And "Duce" meant "leader".

0:44:000:44:02

So we see "Duce"

0:44:020:44:04

on the tiling of the Forum.

0:44:040:44:07

He's there, everywhere. He's inescapable.

0:44:070:44:10

He is the animating force and spirit of fascism.

0:44:100:44:15

Even religion was exploited to confer spurious legitimacy

0:44:220:44:26

on Mussolini's regime.

0:44:260:44:27

In Florence, Wright filmed an Easter procession,

0:44:270:44:31

in which fascists and Roman Catholics marched side by side.

0:44:310:44:36

This procession is a kind of living metaphor

0:44:380:44:41

of the unity of church and state in Italy.

0:44:410:44:44

There had been a concordat, an agreement,

0:44:440:44:46

between Mussolini and the Pope in 1929.

0:44:460:44:51

The irony was, actually Mussolini was an atheist at heart

0:44:510:44:55

and he had no time for the Pope at all.

0:44:550:44:58

But he realised how powerful the Pope was,

0:44:580:45:00

and he realised that that it was important

0:45:000:45:03

for him to get the Church on side.

0:45:030:45:05

This vast sea of ecclesiastics parading

0:45:120:45:17

in and out of the cathedral,

0:45:170:45:19

is surrounded by the forces of the state,

0:45:190:45:22

the military forces, the Black Shirts.

0:45:220:45:26

The two are entwined.

0:45:260:45:29

They are part of a single entity which is fascist Italy.

0:45:290:45:33

And what is interesting about the alliance between Church and state

0:45:330:45:39

is how much they have in common.

0:45:390:45:42

There was a conscious effort on Mussolini's part

0:45:460:45:49

to mimic religious procession in his processions.

0:45:490:45:52

They have the same sense of ritual, the same sense of observance,

0:45:520:45:56

which of course gives his regime,

0:45:560:45:58

which is a new regime, the sense that it is steeped in history.

0:45:580:46:02

It's a way of provoking emotion, rather than reason,

0:46:070:46:10

on the part of the participants and the audience.

0:46:100:46:13

When the Wright family left Italy and headed towards northern Europe,

0:46:190:46:23

fascism seemed everywhere in the ascendancy.

0:46:230:46:27

But if the changes unfolding elsewhere in Europe seemed menacing,

0:46:330:46:37

the Wrights found little to disturb them

0:46:370:46:39

when they reached the peaceful town of Volendam in Holland.

0:46:390:46:44

Here, many of the residents still wore traditional Dutch dress,

0:46:480:46:53

including pointed bonnets and wooden clogs.

0:46:530:46:56

The clothes worn by the people on the streets of Volendam

0:47:010:47:04

were very different from those on the boulevards of a city

0:47:040:47:07

that by the 1930s had become synonymous

0:47:070:47:10

with the most up-to-date couture.

0:47:100:47:13

In Paris, Bolling took his camera to the sights,

0:47:130:47:18

unaware that in less than a year,

0:47:180:47:20

The City of Lights would find itself plunged into

0:47:200:47:23

the long night of Nazi occupation.

0:47:230:47:26

As any tourist would, Bolling Wright films the Eiffel Tower.

0:47:270:47:31

And there's a poignancy about this shot,

0:47:310:47:35

because this is the last spring, as we now know, of peace.

0:47:350:47:40

And a year later Hitler himself, after the success of the Blitzkrieg,

0:47:400:47:45

the extraordinary invasion of France in six weeks,

0:47:450:47:49

find himself walking under the Eiffel Tower.

0:47:490:47:52

He stands there with his acolytes around him,

0:47:560:48:00

triumphing over the defeat of Germany's ancient foe.

0:48:000:48:05

This is a moment of supreme joy for the Fuhrer,

0:48:050:48:09

here at the base of the Eiffel tower.

0:48:090:48:12

On the other side of the English Channel, life continued as normal,

0:48:190:48:24

though by that spring, war was looming.

0:48:240:48:28

London proceeds, as London has always proceeded,

0:48:280:48:31

with the Changing of the Guard.

0:48:310:48:33

And this is a typical British traditional pageant,

0:48:330:48:38

which contrasts with its jingling spurs

0:48:380:48:42

and its old-fashioned accoutrements,

0:48:420:48:45

with the brutal, mechanised jack booted pageants of the Nazis.

0:48:450:48:52

It's a cosy world in some ways.

0:48:540:48:56

It's a cosy world of red buses and blue policemen

0:48:560:48:59

and perhaps it's a world that hasn't yet woken up to the danger.

0:48:590:49:02

Although the danger is there

0:49:020:49:04

and it must be constantly in the background.

0:49:040:49:08

And of course, the holiday party catch a glimpse

0:49:080:49:10

of the anxieties that are gnawing away at British hearts.

0:49:100:49:15

They see that the odds on peace are diminishing.

0:49:150:49:19

The Wright family left Europe and sailed back to an America

0:49:300:49:33

that was still neutral, and anxious to avoid being drawn into

0:49:330:49:37

a war that was now all but inevitable.

0:49:370:49:39

Already, New York was one of the world's great cities.

0:49:470:49:51

But Manhattan was very different from the metropolis we know today.

0:49:510:49:54

The city had suffered during the Depression,

0:49:560:49:59

but now its citizens were invited to look with hope to the future,

0:49:590:50:03

with the opening of the 1939 World Fair.

0:50:030:50:07

Here was the new city of tomorrow, untouched by poverty or war.

0:50:100:50:15

Corporate pavilions sold visions of a future

0:50:150:50:18

filled with consumer products that promised a better world.

0:50:180:50:22

International exhibits stood side by side,

0:50:220:50:26

seeming to represent the ideal of world peace.

0:50:260:50:29

It is striking to see the pavilions of different countries

0:50:290:50:32

that will soon enough be at war with one another.

0:50:320:50:35

Yet the idea of a Worlds Fair is to emphasise a different

0:50:350:50:39

kind of world - a world of cooperation, a world of peace.

0:50:390:50:43

And not a place where we're gonna sacrifice millions of lives.

0:50:430:50:47

It seems odd to us now, on the very eve of World War Two,

0:50:490:50:54

most people were kind of blithely putting that out of their mind.

0:50:540:50:57

They come upon this futuristic World's Fair

0:50:570:51:01

when everything looks new.

0:51:010:51:04

So by the time you think of TV, air-conditioning,

0:51:040:51:07

new modern automobiles, modernistic, futuristic cities...

0:51:070:51:11

The world is becoming a better place,

0:51:110:51:13

and isn't it wonderful where we going?

0:51:130:51:15

And all the things which they celebrate,

0:51:200:51:23

all that is soon going to be put on hold.

0:51:230:51:26

Because all those factories that are making clothes

0:51:260:51:29

will now be making uniforms.

0:51:290:51:30

Factories that are making automobiles will be making tanks.

0:51:300:51:34

Everything is going to be shifted to a wartime footing.

0:51:340:51:37

The whole economy is going to be changed -

0:51:370:51:39

not in the way they had envisaged, of a cleaner,

0:51:390:51:42

more modern, more prosperous world - but of a frightening,

0:51:420:51:47

dark period of loneliness and fright.

0:51:470:51:50

Around the same time, on the West Coast of America,

0:52:020:52:05

Bolling Wright's brother Harry watched the night skies

0:52:050:52:09

illuminated spectacularly by the Golden Gate Exposition

0:52:090:52:13

on Treasure Island - San Francisco's own World Fair.

0:52:130:52:16

It was a thrill every time you'd come across the bridge or the ferry.

0:52:210:52:27

There was just something about it,

0:52:270:52:30

that just got the old goosebumps going

0:52:300:52:33

because you knew you were in for something new.

0:52:330:52:36

It's just like out of nowhere, grew this wonderland.

0:52:360:52:40

For three years, an army of workers had toiled

0:52:420:52:45

to build this 400 acre island

0:52:450:52:47

from the mud and sand of San Francisco bay.

0:52:470:52:51

Like the city's new bridges, Treasure Island

0:52:510:52:54

was one of the major New Deal public works projects

0:52:540:52:57

which the government funded

0:52:570:52:59

to generate work for America's millions of unemployed.

0:52:590:53:02

The authorities planned to build

0:53:040:53:06

an international airport on Treasure Island.

0:53:060:53:08

But first, the site would host a World Fair -

0:53:080:53:10

an event that symbolised

0:53:100:53:12

the nation's hopes for a brighter tomorrow.

0:53:120:53:15

At the time while the island was going, the people and their hopes

0:53:150:53:19

were there, it was like a dream coming true.

0:53:190:53:23

The end of all the bad times that we had and went through,

0:53:230:53:27

and the Depression, and it gave you a feeling

0:53:270:53:30

of... "good times are coming".

0:53:300:53:33

On Treasure Island, good times always prevailed,

0:53:350:53:39

especially along the so-called "Gayway" -

0:53:390:53:42

the main pleasure-ground of the fair -

0:53:420:53:44

where some of the attractions were surprisingly risque.

0:53:440:53:48

# I sailed away

0:53:480:53:51

# To Treasure Island

0:53:510:53:54

# And my heart stood still when I landed on the silvery shore... #

0:53:540:53:59

I was a swimmer in the Aquacade, Billy Rose's Aquacade.

0:53:590:54:03

I was 20-years-old.

0:54:030:54:05

And this was my first and only taste of show business at that time.

0:54:050:54:10

We'd be out on stage and then we'd dive in to the music.

0:54:100:54:14

Then pretty soon you'd blend together

0:54:140:54:17

and start swimming together stroke for stroke.

0:54:170:54:20

It was just a thrill there every time you did a show.

0:54:200:54:24

The Fair had the atmosphere of a carnival,

0:54:430:54:46

but it also had more lofty aims.

0:54:460:54:49

At the centre of Treasure Island stood Pacifica,

0:54:520:54:57

an 80-foot-high mythical goddess

0:54:570:54:59

which symbolised the goal of peace and unity

0:54:590:55:02

among the nations of the Pacific.

0:55:020:55:04

But by the time Fair closed in September 1940,

0:55:070:55:10

war in the Pacific was inevitable.

0:55:100:55:13

Eventually, the United States Navy took possession of Treasure Island,

0:55:130:55:19

and turned its exhibition halls into barracks.

0:55:190:55:21

Even the Fair's great symbol of peace, Pacifica, fell victim to war.

0:55:210:55:26

The navy moved in and started tearing things down.

0:55:290:55:33

They put a cable round the statue

0:55:330:55:38

and they took some tractors and pulled it down.

0:55:380:55:42

And when it hit the ground, it just burst into pieces.

0:55:420:55:47

It was the feeling of hope, of things turning round,

0:55:470:55:52

then all of sudden you've got that feeling, "What's going on?"

0:55:520:55:55

We weren't sure,

0:55:570:56:00

you could only hear rumours, that we were going to go to war pretty soon.

0:56:000:56:04

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour on 7th December, 1941,

0:56:070:56:11

forced the United States into the Second World War.

0:56:110:56:15

In the attack, nearly 2,400 personnel were killed

0:56:150:56:19

and over eleven hundred others were injured.

0:56:190:56:23

Once the playground of the rich, the oceans became a battleground.

0:56:230:56:27

The cruise liners that had carried the Wright family around the world

0:56:270:56:31

were commandeered and used as troop transports.

0:56:310:56:35

A Golden Age of ocean travel had abruptly come to an end.

0:56:350:56:39

What we are seeing in this wonderful colour footage

0:56:400:56:43

is the last of a grand era.

0:56:430:56:45

The curtain was closing

0:56:450:56:46

and we didn't know that it would be locked forever.

0:56:460:56:49

One third of the ships would be destroyed in the Second World War,

0:56:490:56:53

but more importantly, the way we felt,

0:56:530:56:55

the way we looked at things, changed forever.

0:56:550:56:58

I don't think people were ever quite the same,

0:56:580:57:00

the style of travel was ever the same -

0:57:000:57:03

the same deep indulgence that we had in those 1930s escapist years.

0:57:030:57:07

In the years after the war, the Wright brothers

0:57:100:57:14

travelled less frequently,

0:57:140:57:15

as age and infirmity gradually took their toll.

0:57:150:57:19

After a long illness, Harry Wright died in Mexico City in 1954.

0:57:190:57:24

And Bolling passed away in 1975.

0:57:240:57:28

But in their extraordinary collection of films,

0:57:280:57:31

which shed light and colour

0:57:310:57:34

on one of the most momentous decades of the 20th Century,

0:57:340:57:39

the Wright brothers live on.

0:57:390:57:41

This tourist footage is fascinating for a number of reasons.

0:57:430:57:47

It illuminates the...

0:57:470:57:50

dark valley of the 1930s in the most vivid way.

0:57:500:57:55

It brings to technicolour life

0:57:550:57:57

a world which we have seen only in terms of black and white.

0:57:570:58:02

It gives us a sense that this tourist idyll

0:58:020:58:07

is actually about to come to an end

0:58:070:58:09

with the sound of the dropping of bombs.

0:58:090:58:12

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:260:58:29

E-mail [email protected]

0:58:290:58:32

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