Browse content similar to Youth Hostelling: The First 100 Years. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
This is the story of how one of the most influential youth movements of | 0:00:04 | 0:00:08 | |
all time used film to open up the countryside to the masses. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:13 | |
For generations, the promotional films of the Youth Hostel Association | 0:00:13 | 0:00:18 | |
have encouraged millions of people to expand their horizons and see the world through fresh eyes. | 0:00:18 | 0:00:25 | |
Now, after years of lying unseen, the films are being broadcast together for the first time. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:32 | |
They follow a journey through decades of what it means to be | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
young, and as youth hostelling celebrates its first 100 years, show how our relationship with | 0:00:39 | 0:00:45 | |
the British countryside was changed forever. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
Heading towards the Youth Hostel Association's headquarters in Derbyshire, film archivist | 0:01:11 | 0:01:16 | |
Binny Baker is about to pick up a collection of vintage films which she's hoping will help shed fresh | 0:01:16 | 0:01:22 | |
light on an organisation which has given millions of people their first experience of the great outdoors. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:29 | |
I know by experience that there will be all sorts of surprises hidden within those boxes. | 0:01:30 | 0:01:37 | |
It's just how many we'll find. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:39 | |
There'll be some interesting stuff, but it's just how the film's fared over the years. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:44 | |
Youth Hostelling started in Germany in 1909 | 0:01:47 | 0:01:51 | |
and spread to Britain in the 1930s. | 0:01:51 | 0:01:53 | |
From the outset, the people behind its progress here quickly understood | 0:01:53 | 0:01:57 | |
the importance of film in promoting its message. | 0:01:57 | 0:02:00 | |
The films Binny's come to look at were recently unearthed during an overhaul of the YHA's records. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:07 | |
-What are we going to find in here? -All sorts of things. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
She's already viewed some, but today she's joining the association's voluntary archivist, | 0:02:14 | 0:02:19 | |
John Martin, to assess what other treasures may be hidden here. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:23 | |
When we've collected the archive here, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:26 | |
they've come from various different sources, | 0:02:26 | 0:02:29 | |
and some of the sources are clearly much more complete than others. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
I want to have a look at some of these older ones. Quite often, you can tell just literally | 0:02:33 | 0:02:39 | |
by the box and the... | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
-Tin cans. -Yeah, look at that one. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:44 | |
YHA disk reader 9.5. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:46 | |
Now, 9.5 is one of the earliest film formats that people could use. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:51 | |
1930s. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:53 | |
Inside, a handwritten note, which promises to take John and Binny back to the very start. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:59 | |
Now, this is most interesting, because this is a list of some very | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
early Northumberland youth hostels, which presumably are on the film. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:07 | |
And mentioned is Wallington. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:09 | |
Now, the history of Wallington is enormously important. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
This very much looks to me like an original because you can see, if you look up at the light there, | 0:03:12 | 0:03:19 | |
can you see the different colour in film stock? | 0:03:19 | 0:03:21 | |
There's dark and then there's light, and that's part of the way the film's been exposed. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:26 | |
Those little gaps there are where they've been spliced together. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:30 | |
This is going to be an exciting film, because it's not a print, | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
it's a camera original, or it's been edited, at least. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:36 | |
I love the fact that here, in your hand, | 0:03:36 | 0:03:39 | |
is the history of the YHA in the 20th century. It's just great. | 0:03:39 | 0:03:44 | |
Before taking the films back to the safety of her temperature controlled | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
vaults, Binny's keen to gets John's expert knowledge of this early find. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:59 | |
So, first time we're actually going to look at some film. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:03 | |
-Very exciting. -It is, isn't it? | 0:04:03 | 0:04:05 | |
It's not in too bad nick, so I'm hoping we're going to get a pretty good picture as we go through. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:11 | |
What a wonderful piece of apparatus. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
It's great, isn't it? | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
There's our first image. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:18 | |
Yes. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:20 | |
Looks '30s to me. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
With those uniforms. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:24 | |
Like a women's keep-fit class, isn't it? | 0:04:24 | 0:04:27 | |
-Yeah. It's "Freedom YHA". -Yes. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
Once we take this away and do some proper work on it, the quality will be, I can tell just by | 0:04:30 | 0:04:36 | |
looking at this, the quality is just going to be fantastic. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:39 | |
"Northumbrian hostels". | 0:04:54 | 0:04:57 | |
Now, this'll be interesting. | 0:04:57 | 0:04:59 | |
What was the significance of the Northumbrian...? | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
It was the very first of the YHA's regions. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:08 | |
The Trevelyans were | 0:05:08 | 0:05:11 | |
the chief instigators or amongst the chief instigators | 0:05:11 | 0:05:15 | |
at the very beginning of the association in 1931, '32. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:19 | |
Among the gems here are shots of early YHA activity at Wallington Hall, | 0:05:19 | 0:05:25 | |
the home of Sir Charles Trevelyan, an early benefactor | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
and the brother of the association's first president. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
Later, emerging from the film, what are thought to be the first moving images of Sir Charles himself. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:39 | |
And they donated what, money, or their own buildings? | 0:05:39 | 0:05:43 | |
Yes, part of Wallington Hall became one of the very first youth hostels in the country. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:50 | |
With access to the countryside far more restricted than it is today, | 0:05:53 | 0:05:57 | |
it was crucial that the YHA attracted the landed gentry to its cause. | 0:05:57 | 0:06:01 | |
Amongst the landowners, there were some | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
very liberal or socialist leaning landowners like the Trevelyans, | 0:06:04 | 0:06:11 | |
who were very keen to encourage this kind of activity on their land. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:17 | |
-This would be an official film. -Yeah. -I'm certain of that, and it would be duplicated. | 0:06:17 | 0:06:22 | |
-There we go. -Yeah. Very good. | 0:06:22 | 0:06:24 | |
The concept of youth hostelling flourished as part of a broad liberal movement | 0:06:27 | 0:06:31 | |
led by rambling and cycling groups, who wanted to get | 0:06:31 | 0:06:34 | |
the working classes away from polluted urban areas into the great outdoors. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:39 | |
Once established, it quickly became a cause among both the rich and poor. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:44 | |
Behind the Youth Hostels Association at the very beginning, there was | 0:06:46 | 0:06:51 | |
very definitely a lot of serious thought, a lot of financial support. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:58 | |
Although the YHA in the 1930s was never that well off, it couldn't have got where it got to | 0:06:58 | 0:07:06 | |
having, within five years, over 200 hostels, without a great deal of | 0:07:06 | 0:07:12 | |
support by well-meaning people who could afford to do that. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:16 | |
As Binny takes the rolls of film back to her base in Yorkshire | 0:07:19 | 0:07:23 | |
for preservation, she's excited by the secrets they may contain. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
We've got the history of the Youth Hostel Association | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
over at least seven decades, so that is really exciting. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:37 | |
I was optimistic at the beginning of this sort of archive hunt | 0:07:37 | 0:07:41 | |
that we would have a nationally significant collection. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:46 | |
I think the more we look, the more we'll find. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:49 | |
The early snapshot of hostelling in Northumberland is dwarfed by | 0:07:50 | 0:07:54 | |
the discovery of the YHA's first film aimed at boosting recruitment. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:59 | |
In 1933, two years after the first hostels were opened in Britain, | 0:07:59 | 0:08:03 | |
the association was already striving to assert itself on an ambitious scale. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:09 | |
It set out its manifesto in a drama called Youth Hails Adventure. | 0:08:09 | 0:08:14 | |
The film, which would have been shown in church and village halls, advertises the YHA's aims | 0:08:17 | 0:08:22 | |
of bringing the classes and sexes together in a new apolitical but democratic movement. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:27 | |
For John Walton, professor of Social History at Leeds Metropolitan University, | 0:08:29 | 0:08:34 | |
the film represents an early example of liberal propaganda. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:38 | |
The crucial point about this film is that it's made in the early 1930s, really at just about the lowest | 0:08:38 | 0:08:44 | |
point of the great industrial depression that really begins in 1929. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:49 | |
There's a fear of revolution. There's a fear of communism. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:53 | |
All this is designed to make people feel comforted and contented with their lot. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:59 | |
It's designed to defuse tensions, and prevent class conflict from developing. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:05 | |
I think it's very impressive that they use film, | 0:09:08 | 0:09:11 | |
although it's worth noticing that it's not a talkie. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:15 | |
Talkies were available by 1933 but they don't actually use them. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:20 | |
It is something exciting and new. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:22 | |
It's a new opportunity to show | 0:09:22 | 0:09:25 | |
spontaneity in all sorts of ways, | 0:09:25 | 0:09:29 | |
and what's particularly interesting is that they do have the resources to do it. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:34 | |
Each character in Youth Hails Adventure is carefully chosen | 0:09:41 | 0:09:45 | |
for what they represent of the social structure of the time. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
And film was the perfect way of getting this message across, | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
as a medium which was spreading fast among all socio-economic groups. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:55 | |
It's really featuring the workers of a big London firm, | 0:09:55 | 0:10:03 | |
wanting to escape on holiday. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:05 | |
The youth hosteller is being quite evangelical about the YHA to the boss's son, | 0:10:05 | 0:10:12 | |
who is quite drawn towards the idea of the YHA, but at the same time needs to be won over. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:19 | |
But he's doomed, anyway, to go off on holiday | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
with his father. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
Despite the film's ambitious scale, there are still some tell-tale signs | 0:10:28 | 0:10:32 | |
that they were working to a limited budget. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:35 | |
A lot of the sets are outside, and you can tell that because the wind blows through the set. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:40 | |
That's a great example of frugal film-making at that time. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:43 | |
They probably couldn't afford a big, indoor set that was lit, so the alternative, | 0:10:43 | 0:10:49 | |
to get the lighting right for the film, was to use an outdoor set. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:53 | |
So you wait for a good day, and then you shoot it outside. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:56 | |
The film questions the value of the typical seaside resorts of the era, | 0:11:02 | 0:11:07 | |
showing these as less fun than the YHA's dynamic new holiday movement. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:12 | |
Well, what we have here is the boss's son being bored at the Grand Hotel, sitting out quite comfortably | 0:11:12 | 0:11:19 | |
having breakfast, but really wishing he was somewhere else. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
And you can see the idea dawning upon him that it would be really nice to go and join his friends | 0:11:22 | 0:11:28 | |
at the youth hostel, so here he is writing his letter of application. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:33 | |
You actually have to get your YHA card. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
You have to be a defined member of the organisation. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:40 | |
So there is some kind of mystical rite of passage about joining the YHA. | 0:11:40 | 0:11:45 | |
Also central to the film was the promotion of female emancipation. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:50 | |
The bicycle was a great agent of women's liberation from the 1890s onwards. | 0:11:52 | 0:11:57 | |
We see them frequently riding in mixed parties, but again, | 0:11:57 | 0:12:03 | |
innocently, in this friendly, comradely sort of way. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:07 | |
Sexual contact is certainly not what the YHA thinks they should be interested in. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:11 | |
What they should be doing is forming healthy relationships that might | 0:12:11 | 0:12:15 | |
lead to marriage, while being very well-behaved in the meantime. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:19 | |
While the film was intended to have universal appeal, some of the imagery was surprisingly daring. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:25 | |
The scenes of nudity are completely unexpected. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
I'm absolutely astounded that this might have been shown without being cut. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:34 | |
In the 1930s, there is an increasingly relaxed attitude to | 0:12:34 | 0:12:39 | |
the display of parts of the body that had hitherto been hidden, | 0:12:39 | 0:12:43 | |
but this means legs and arms, it means open-necked shirts, and it means not wearing hats. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:49 | |
It does not mean mooning! | 0:12:49 | 0:12:51 | |
With all the characters eventually joining together to build a new hostel, including the initially | 0:12:54 | 0:12:59 | |
sceptical factory owners, the film acts as a recruiting tool right across the class divide. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:05 | |
Of course, this is showing people how they can make a practical contribution | 0:13:08 | 0:13:12 | |
to the development of this virtuous new organisation. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:15 | |
Some of the most dramatic images from the early YHA films are of mountaineering. | 0:13:32 | 0:13:37 | |
Traditionally a rich man's pastime, by the 1930s and '40s, climbing was becoming a more democratic sport, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:45 | |
and the YHA was keen to show itself helping to make it accessible to all. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:50 | |
But first they had to overcome the difficulty of capturing film in such potentially dangerous locations. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:57 | |
Today, mountaineering cameraman Ian Burton, who worked with Griff Rhys Jones | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
on the BBC series, Mountain, is hoping to find out how they did it. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:10 | |
Used to scrambling up mountains with the lightest of modern equipment, today is going to be different. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:20 | |
Joining Ian at the Cow and Calf rocks in Yorkshire is film historian John Adderley, who's brought | 0:14:20 | 0:14:26 | |
the kind of 16 millimetre camera the YHA pioneers would have used. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:32 | |
This is a Cine-Kodak Special. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
This is a very popular camera in the '30s and '40s, I believe. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:40 | |
There's no auto focus. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:41 | |
There's no auto iris. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:44 | |
It's wind-up, so you've got to make sure you've got plenty of wind for the shot you want to take. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:49 | |
You don't want to press the button and find you've got five seconds of wind left. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:54 | |
Before Ian begins his climb, the two men assess the original cameraman's handiwork. | 0:14:56 | 0:15:01 | |
Oh, wow. You can see the climbing gear is absolutely horrendous. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:06 | |
It's just a piece of rope tied around his waist. You wouldn't ever want to hang off that. | 0:15:06 | 0:15:11 | |
The footage may look dramatic, but Ian's not convinced | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
the cameraman is taking as much of a risk as the climbers. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:17 | |
By looking at this, there, for example, it doesn't give you any idea where it is. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:21 | |
It could be only ten feet off the ground, very easy to get to, | 0:15:21 | 0:15:25 | |
but still, in those days, it'd look amazing. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:28 | |
With John's expert advice, Ian is given a quick lesson in how to use the vintage camera. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:34 | |
Oh, my word, it's heavy. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:36 | |
You look through that hole to line up the viewfinder here. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:39 | |
Do the shutter a few times. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:41 | |
How do you stop it? | 0:15:41 | 0:15:43 | |
-Push it up. -Oh, I see. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:47 | |
Ian's subjects today are a couple of climbing guides well used to tackling crags like these. | 0:15:49 | 0:15:54 | |
He sets off in search of the kind of vantage point he thinks his predecessors would have used. | 0:15:54 | 0:15:59 | |
It looks really high, which is the key thing. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:02 | |
It's about 10 metres up, so it's as safe as houses but it looks really dramatic. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:06 | |
Such an awkward camera to use. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:14 | |
I've got two lenses but neither of them are really that helpful. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:19 | |
Oh! What's happened to my film? | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
One problem faced by both Ian and his predecessors is the limited amount of film. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:30 | |
It's really, really frustrating because it's a really terrible camera to use. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:34 | |
It's lovely using film again but I've got no idea whether its going to be any good. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:40 | |
With his film finished and the weather deteriorating, Ian has no option but to climb back down. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:47 | |
In the '30s, the climbing films would have had to be sent away for processing. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:55 | |
Today, Ian and John are in for an anxious wait. | 0:16:58 | 0:17:03 | |
Excellent. That looks wonderful. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
It looks really juddery and really old-fashioned looking, | 0:17:06 | 0:17:09 | |
so they really didn't walk and act like that. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:12 | |
It was the camera. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:14 | |
The viewfinder isn't in a helpful position. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
For usablility, it's terrible. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
I would've said I'm amazed they got anything shot. But actually it's produced quite remarkable results. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:29 | |
They were the pioneers, and I feel quite envious of that. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:33 | |
To be a pioneer like they were, using a technology that hadn't been used before. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:39 | |
It must have been a great feeling. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:41 | |
At the Yorkshire Film Archive, where staff have begun the task of | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
cataloguing and restoring the YHA's collection, archivist Binny Baker has made an important discovery. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:58 | |
The box she's concentrating on contains four separate reels of one film entitled The Magic Shilling. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:08 | |
Produced in 1949, it was the first film to be made | 0:18:10 | 0:18:14 | |
after the Second World War, when film stock was scarce and access to the countryside restricted. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:19 | |
The YHA needed another big promotional push. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:24 | |
You just know that nobody has looked at this for a long time, and on this, | 0:18:24 | 0:18:27 | |
one of the first things we noticed is that it is negative film. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:31 | |
Prints might have been done from it, so this is the film that actually went through the camera. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:37 | |
We thought this was going to be called The Magic Shilling, but as soon as you put it on, it isn't. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:42 | |
It's called The Magic Triangle. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:44 | |
One of the concerns was this reticulation, | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
which you can see here, which is deterioration of the film stock. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:52 | |
We then transferred it via a telecine machine, | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
and during that process there is some enhancement that you can do to get | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
the real kind of essence of what that cameraman, that photographer, wanted. | 0:18:58 | 0:19:03 | |
Because over time it loses tension, the film warps, there are all sorts of things. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:08 | |
But with modern technology you can almost get it back to its pristine best. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
One key difference in The Magic Triangle | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
is that all references to class have been swept away. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:21 | |
Instead, it concentrates on another of the YHA's core aims, the desire for international harmony | 0:19:21 | 0:19:27 | |
in a world torn apart by five years of world war. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:30 | |
This as a film was much more about the whole work of the YHA. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:39 | |
But it based it on a couple who had joined the association. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:43 | |
So there's a story. But it also widens out, | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
and has, on the four different reels it has a whole different set of areas that it looks at. | 0:19:45 | 0:19:51 | |
It looks at internationalism, it looks at the camaraderie of youth hostel members, | 0:19:51 | 0:19:58 | |
it looks at the hostels, at the British countryside, it looks at the industrial nature | 0:19:58 | 0:20:04 | |
of the towns they were coming from in order to go to the countryside. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:08 | |
So it covers a huge aspect of the work of the organisation. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:12 | |
Oscar-winning film producer Lord Puttnam | 0:20:17 | 0:20:19 | |
is a former chairman of the Council For The Protection Of Rural England, who began his career in advertising. | 0:20:19 | 0:20:25 | |
These films depict an attitude to the countryside which is essentially English, | 0:20:25 | 0:20:30 | |
I'd say English more than British, essentially pastoral, | 0:20:30 | 0:20:34 | |
it's romantic, it's broadly encouraging and highly traditionalist. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:42 | |
They've become really interesting social documents. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
But as a means promoting the YHA's cause, he feels The Magic Triangle is a lost opportunity. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:54 | |
I just was frustrated by the fact it could have and should have been done better. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:59 | |
It didn't strike as having been made for a professional screening. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
It would have been loved by the people in it, they'd have absolutely adored it. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:06 | |
If you look at that film, compared to the American, German or even French films of the period, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:11 | |
it depicts a very English attitude to a very English countryside. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:15 | |
It wasn't that the idea was bad. It was that the execution was bad. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:20 | |
There's a lack of belief, a lack of self belief in the film. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
Although the film may have lacked panache, it was certainly was well timed. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:29 | |
The post war generation was the first to benefit from legislation introducing paid holidays. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:35 | |
Everybody's got an amount of money | 0:21:35 | 0:21:37 | |
but they've got nothing to spend it on. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:39 | |
You've got rationing on some things into the early 1950s. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:43 | |
You've got shortages of all sorts of basic commodities. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:47 | |
Getting to the countryside must have been a tremendous safety valve for people | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
after the end of the war, once it became possible to travel again. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
But although its audience might have had more money to spend, | 0:22:03 | 0:22:07 | |
the YHA had to be careful with its own resources. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
And that included a clever piece of recycling. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
One thing that's really fascinating about this particular film is that | 0:22:14 | 0:22:18 | |
later on in the collection, later on in the years, they used it again, | 0:22:18 | 0:22:22 | |
and cut it up into pieces, and made two separate films using original footage from this film. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:29 | |
And it was a really exciting discovery to find that when looking through those films. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
You were looking at the footage thinking, "I've seen that shot again. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:37 | |
"I've seen that shot before, where has it come from?" | 0:22:37 | 0:22:40 | |
One of the re-edited films, Yostling, | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
is made to promote the pleasures of Youth Hostelling in Britain. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:46 | |
Cut down to less than 20 minutes, it's intended to deliver the YHA's message much more quickly. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:51 | |
Even its inter titles are more succinct. | 0:22:51 | 0:22:53 | |
They were a very frugal organisation, they worked with volunteers. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:01 | |
They weren't going to spend their money unwisely. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:04 | |
For all their pastoral charm, both Youth Hails Adventure and The Magic Triangle | 0:23:08 | 0:23:12 | |
were filmed when there were continuing tensions about access to the countryside. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:17 | |
The '30s had seen mass trespasses as the burgeoning | 0:23:21 | 0:23:24 | |
ramblers movement sought to sweep away restrictions to open land. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
And the campaign for greater rights to roam continued after the war. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:32 | |
But the YHA makes no reference to this bitter conflict with landowners in any of its films. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:38 | |
The YHA was specifically founded in this country | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
as a non-political organisation. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:43 | |
Almost from day one, we were not seen as a pressure group, | 0:23:43 | 0:23:49 | |
we were not seen as a group like the Ramblers Association, | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
who were campaigning for access to the countryside. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
So although YHA members very much got involved in what they were doing, we as an organisation didn't. | 0:23:56 | 0:24:04 | |
And I think that has perhaps held us in very good sway over the whole of our existence. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:10 | |
The YHA also had to tread carefully when it came to sexual politics. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:16 | |
Although clearly promoting equality and communal living, | 0:24:16 | 0:24:20 | |
the films had to satisfy everyone that the YHA was respectable. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:24 | |
The depiction of this very chaste organisation was there to reassure | 0:24:24 | 0:24:28 | |
parents or to make girls feel more secure about going away to a YHA. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:34 | |
I could equally make the point that maybe a lot of the people they would have liked to have attracted | 0:24:34 | 0:24:40 | |
were turned off by it! | 0:24:40 | 0:24:42 | |
Great shots of people having to separate. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:44 | |
In virtually every single film of every decade, | 0:24:44 | 0:24:47 | |
when it's bed time, there's an absolute point at which each film says, | 0:24:47 | 0:24:51 | |
"Well it's night-night time now", | 0:24:51 | 0:24:53 | |
and the girls go off into one room and the boys go off into the other. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:57 | |
You see shots of dormitories where people are getting changed. | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
The YHA were obviously making a big thing of that, in order to convince parents | 0:25:00 | 0:25:04 | |
and I suppose to convince people generally, that it was an upstanding organisation | 0:25:04 | 0:25:09 | |
and it wasn't going to put up with any hanky panky. | 0:25:09 | 0:25:11 | |
Central to many of the films is the role of the YHA's wardens. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:25 | |
Many of whom cut their teeth here at Idwal Cottage in Wales, | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
which was often used as a location for filming. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:32 | |
It's the oldest youth hostel in Britain still in use and two days before officially reopening | 0:25:32 | 0:25:37 | |
after a major refit, a group of ex-wardens are returning | 0:25:37 | 0:25:40 | |
for the first time to see how life here has changed. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
Hello, Ken, nice to see you. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:45 | |
The hostel has changed so much since we first knew it. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:57 | |
Six beds, two times three. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:00 | |
And everybody on a Friday or Saturday night would try and get one of these beds to be sleeping outside. | 0:26:00 | 0:26:06 | |
Lovely. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:08 | |
Joyce and John Pope were the wardens here in the 1950s. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:12 | |
We had to feed them and keep the place clean and turn them out | 0:26:12 | 0:26:17 | |
at 10 o'clock and let them in at 5 and generally keep order! | 0:26:17 | 0:26:24 | |
And hostellers didn't just come here for the climbing. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
It was mainly for the lads, this hostel. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:32 | |
But the YHA slogan in those days for girls was "YHA - Your Husband Assured." | 0:26:32 | 0:26:39 | |
The job of warden was a powerful position, incorporating the roles | 0:26:43 | 0:26:46 | |
of regimental sergeant major, chaperone, and parent. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
The name for youth hostel wardens in Germany of course is Hausvater and Hausmutter. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:56 | |
You were the parents to them. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:58 | |
We had no authority, of course, outside the hostel at all. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:03 | |
If they were doing things they shouldn't have outside the hostel, | 0:27:03 | 0:27:06 | |
the police would tend to blame us for it. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:08 | |
But actually, we had no authority over them, we could only advise. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:12 | |
A key part of every hostel was the shared common room, | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
where people of all walks of life were encouraged to meet. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:20 | |
Romance often blossomed here. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:22 | |
The common room was very closed in. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:26 | |
We had 40 to 45 people in and it was very tight, so we were all thrown together. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:32 | |
But in those days, it was usual to make your own amusement in the common room. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:38 | |
Part of the tradition was that there would be a sing song each evening. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
Back inside the common room watching films of Idwal's past, echoes of those early days return. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:47 | |
And fragments of the songs have stayed in the memory too. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:50 | |
I'm sure we can give a rendition of some of the old songs! After you! | 0:27:50 | 0:27:55 | |
# One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so. | 0:27:55 | 0:28:00 | |
# I'll sing you two, oh | 0:28:00 | 0:28:02 | |
# Green grow the rushes, oh! | 0:28:02 | 0:28:05 | |
# Two, two, the lily-white boys, clothed all in green, oh, oh! | 0:28:05 | 0:28:08 | |
# One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so! # | 0:28:08 | 0:28:13 | |
Lights out was usually enforced by the warden at 10pm, however good the singing. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:21 | |
And the ethos of equality and shared experience | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
meant everyone who stayed overnight had to do a chore before leaving. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:28 | |
It was a movement and people joined it partly because of the accommodation and partly because | 0:28:30 | 0:28:36 | |
of the spirit of the YHA, which was something quite different to commercial organisations. | 0:28:36 | 0:28:41 | |
And also, it kept the costs down because we didn't have to employ staff to do all the chores. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:49 | |
And it made it possible for anybody to come, because it was very cheap. | 0:28:49 | 0:28:55 | |
From the outset, the YHA was keen to encourage greater international understanding. | 0:29:03 | 0:29:09 | |
Among those inspired by this message was a Manchester schoolteacher, Dr Graham Pink. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:14 | |
As an amateur cameraman, he established film making as part of his pupils education and recorded | 0:29:14 | 0:29:20 | |
his class's first ever trip abroad - a fortnight's youth hostelling to Switzerland in 1963. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:27 | |
I'd had an interest in still photography since I was a lad. | 0:29:27 | 0:29:31 | |
I was given my first camera when I was still early secondary school. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:35 | |
Y'know, an old box camera. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:37 | |
And I gravitated then, I suppose, once I'd started work here I could | 0:29:37 | 0:29:41 | |
afford to buy a camera, I bought a Bolex camera, an 8 mil. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:46 | |
And I set up a film club in the school, and we used to make little films, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:50 | |
and tried to use the youngsters. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:51 | |
This is the sort of camera I would have been using in those days. | 0:29:51 | 0:29:55 | |
Eight millimetre film - tiny film. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:57 | |
And it gave a surprisingly good result with Kodachrome film. | 0:29:57 | 0:30:02 | |
All mechanical. Quite a heavy thing, I must say, to transport, | 0:30:02 | 0:30:06 | |
and when I had all my gear with me for the holiday. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:09 | |
I just managed to collect as much film as I could. | 0:30:09 | 0:30:14 | |
We had a very pleasant couple of weeks travelling between, I think, three hostels in all we visited. | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
And we made this film. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:27 | |
Filmed by one of the pupils as he prepared to capture some of the stunning scenery, | 0:30:27 | 0:30:32 | |
Dr Pink was determined the boys should get the most out of the YHA's opportunity for cultural exchange. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:38 | |
Of course, we wanted our pupils to meet people from Switzerland itself, but of course, if you go to a hostel, | 0:30:38 | 0:30:45 | |
then you'll find there are visitors there from all over the world. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:49 | |
Which, of course, if we'd gone to a hotel, or a bed and breakfast, we wouldn't have experienced that. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:55 | |
They were there, they were abroad, they met other young people. | 0:30:57 | 0:31:01 | |
Having studied the history, the geography, | 0:31:01 | 0:31:04 | |
the geology of the country, they could see it at first hand. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:08 | |
This, of course, would be great fun for them. | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
Quite an event, in the middle of August, to be playing snowballing! | 0:31:11 | 0:31:16 | |
Later on, when I formed a film-making club in school, | 0:31:20 | 0:31:23 | |
I could show it to the pupils, and tell them, "Now, how would you improve this film? | 0:31:23 | 0:31:27 | |
"How would you edit it?" That sort of thing. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:30 | |
How did it change them? I think it gave them a wider view of the world. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:42 | |
It gave them a view of how other people lived. | 0:31:42 | 0:31:44 | |
It was their first trip to Europe, and I'd like to think it broadened their outlook on life. | 0:31:44 | 0:31:49 | |
I'm sure it opened their eyes. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:53 | |
As Binny builds up a clearer picture of what the collection contains, | 0:31:56 | 0:32:01 | |
one film-maker's name is beginning to stand out from the 1950s archive. | 0:32:01 | 0:32:05 | |
There's a really grotty old label here, and I can just about make out, "Western Lakeland." | 0:32:05 | 0:32:12 | |
It says it's 16 mill, and it's...what's that? | 0:32:12 | 0:32:18 | |
"In conjunction with... | 0:32:18 | 0:32:20 | |
"G. Moorwith." | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
Oh, and also with - that's really interesting - with Cowen of Keswick. | 0:32:23 | 0:32:30 | |
Now, Cowen is a film-maker who made two really significant films for the organisation. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:35 | |
So if additional material is being put into this film, again, | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
it's another example of using and re-using film. | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
So that's really good. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
It doesn't smell too bad. It doesn't seem to be suffering too badly of anything. | 0:32:44 | 0:32:48 | |
Already there, I can see there's a break in that film, in the perforations, | 0:32:52 | 0:32:56 | |
so it may not even go through this particular machine. | 0:32:56 | 0:32:59 | |
If you look quite carefully, it's not straight, | 0:32:59 | 0:33:02 | |
so we'll have to go quite carefully, because we've got no idea, as yet, of the age of this film. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:09 | |
Fairly scratchy. It looks like it's been through the mill a few times. | 0:33:16 | 0:33:20 | |
See the clouds moving right over the mountains there, with a massive panoramic view. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:27 | |
But there we have a bit of a problem. Oh, golly, that's split. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:30 | |
I'm going to just have to make some running repairs. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:34 | |
On the original film are cement joints. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:39 | |
They dry out, depending on what the conditions are. | 0:33:39 | 0:33:42 | |
So this'll just be a temporary fix, just so we can go through, and look at it now. | 0:33:42 | 0:33:47 | |
Yeah, I can feel the original cuts in it, so it may be, you know, that this is the only copy of it - | 0:33:48 | 0:33:55 | |
because it feels like an original. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:59 | |
Early colour, Kodachrome, absolutely lovely, despite the scratches on it. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:03 | |
And this is one of the first ones that we've seen. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:06 | |
The only other colour ones that we know of this early period are by Cowen. | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
And as it said on the box, if we're to believe that tin, that's the same film-maker. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:16 | |
Cleaned and digitally remastered, the beautiful clarity of these images can finally be enjoyed | 0:34:18 | 0:34:24 | |
in the way the cameraman would have intended. | 0:34:24 | 0:34:27 | |
We're not getting so much YHA, "Join us, come and look at us." | 0:34:37 | 0:34:43 | |
That doesn't seem to be here, although they've got YHA signage. | 0:34:43 | 0:34:46 | |
Interesting shot, I haven't seen this in any of them - men taking the bins out, | 0:34:48 | 0:34:52 | |
with all the rubbish from the kitchens. SHE CHUCKLES | 0:34:52 | 0:34:56 | |
That's great. | 0:34:56 | 0:34:57 | |
If our research is right on these films, | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
these colour ones are the first colour films we have from Cowen. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:09 | |
He was obviously the film-maker of choice. We don't know an awful lot about him. He came from Keswick. | 0:35:09 | 0:35:14 | |
We've done some research into the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers, | 0:35:14 | 0:35:18 | |
because that's where a lot of film-makers joined that Association, in cine-clubs right over Britain. | 0:35:18 | 0:35:24 | |
But he doesn't seem to have been a member. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:26 | |
At first, Binny's research into this film-maker throws up few leads. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:35 | |
But a few weeks later, there's a break through. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:38 | |
At a house in Southport, more rolls of film shot by W Cowen | 0:35:38 | 0:35:43 | |
take pride of place at the home of a close relative - Alan Bale. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:47 | |
Called Bill Cowen to his family, and most people who knew him - he was my grandfather. | 0:35:47 | 0:35:53 | |
He was born in 1897, so he was a Victorian, one of the last Victorians. He ran a chemist shop, | 0:35:53 | 0:36:00 | |
so he would have had access to the materials, and to cameras, and so on, | 0:36:00 | 0:36:05 | |
cos that would have been what they sold. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:07 | |
He always liked still photography, | 0:36:07 | 0:36:09 | |
so he was quite a happy amateur photographer, to say the least, before the war. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:15 | |
In the '50s, and so on, he became a professional cameraman. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:18 | |
Bill Cowen's natural gift behind the camera is shown to great effect on the YHA film Breaking New Ground. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:32 | |
Here, the camera lingers on the delights of a rural Britain that was rapidly disappearing. | 0:36:35 | 0:36:41 | |
Cowen was clearly filming with the future in mind. | 0:36:41 | 0:36:45 | |
But it was his next film which was to cement his reputation. | 0:36:49 | 0:36:53 | |
COMMENTATOR: 'The end of the day will bring a common need - | 0:36:53 | 0:36:56 | |
'the need for rest, food and shelter. | 0:36:56 | 0:36:58 | |
'Let us therefore go down to join these many and different tributaries flowing now into a common stream, | 0:36:58 | 0:37:05 | |
'to where, irrespective of race, creed or politics, | 0:37:05 | 0:37:09 | |
'occupation or social distinction, | 0:37:09 | 0:37:12 | |
'there is a youth hostel offering food, warmth, shelter, | 0:37:12 | 0:37:15 | |
'and simple accommodation of a pattern these wanderers have created for themselves.' | 0:37:15 | 0:37:19 | |
Where All Ways Meet is the youth hostel's first film with sound. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:24 | |
They began in style - using the voice of one of the great broadcasters of his generation - | 0:37:24 | 0:37:28 | |
the Welsh poet, and BBC wartime correspondent, Wynford Vaughan-Thomas. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:33 | |
As far as how he knew him, I don't know. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:35 | |
He perhaps knew him through photography, or broadcasting, | 0:37:35 | 0:37:38 | |
and maybe he'd been working in the Lake District, and Grandfather had met him. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:43 | |
But, you know, it would have been quite a good person to have... | 0:37:43 | 0:37:48 | |
to have a well-known broadcaster actually doing the commentary on the film, I should imagine. | 0:37:48 | 0:37:53 | |
Where All Ways Meet is basically centred around the Lake District, which was his home. | 0:37:53 | 0:37:58 | |
And, you know, it shows a lot of the great landscape | 0:37:58 | 0:38:03 | |
of the Lake District, and so on - it's explored in that film. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:07 | |
I would imagine they were some of the first films he'd made professionally. | 0:38:07 | 0:38:12 | |
And it is quite fascinating, it seems very well shot to me. | 0:38:12 | 0:38:16 | |
You know, it was interesting to see that part of my grandfather's life come to life. | 0:38:16 | 0:38:20 | |
Bill Cowen's early work for the YHA was to provide a springboard to a successful career in film, | 0:38:24 | 0:38:30 | |
eventually leading to a job on the award-winning TV wildlife series, Survival. | 0:38:30 | 0:38:35 | |
A passion sparked to life by shooting images like these. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:39 | |
COMMENTATOR: 'Theirs for a day, the freedom of mountain, moor, or open road. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:44 | |
'The warmth of the sun, the clean, fresh bluster of the wind, the sweep of the sky. | 0:38:44 | 0:38:49 | |
'And above all, a feeling of deep content that will abide with them | 0:38:49 | 0:38:52 | |
'through the week of work ahead, and long after.' | 0:38:52 | 0:38:56 | |
COCKEREL CROWS | 0:38:58 | 0:39:00 | |
# Good morning! Good morning! | 0:39:03 | 0:39:05 | |
# Good morning! Good morning! | 0:39:05 | 0:39:07 | |
# Good morning... # | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
Another recurring theme in the films is food. | 0:39:10 | 0:39:12 | |
And in particular, the legendary cooked breakfast, | 0:39:12 | 0:39:16 | |
a meal seen as the height of luxury when many of these films were made. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:22 | |
When I first started youth hostelling, | 0:39:22 | 0:39:24 | |
immediately after the war, food such as this was tightly rationed. | 0:39:24 | 0:39:28 | |
COCKEREL CROWS | 0:39:28 | 0:39:29 | |
# Good morning! Good morning! Good! # | 0:39:29 | 0:39:31 | |
Those of us who lived in the towns, we were pretty lucky when we came out. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:37 | |
We'd...you know, pass a local farm | 0:39:37 | 0:39:41 | |
who knew us, and he would be prepared to sell us one or two eggs. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:45 | |
# Nothing has changed, it's still the same... # | 0:39:45 | 0:39:48 | |
We were all not very well off, | 0:39:48 | 0:39:51 | |
so to minimise our own costs - our own personal costs, | 0:39:51 | 0:39:54 | |
we scrounged food from home. | 0:39:54 | 0:39:56 | |
I mean, here you see, literally, a banquet. | 0:39:56 | 0:40:00 | |
We sometimes spent as much as two hours in the men's kitchen, in the self-catering kitchen, | 0:40:06 | 0:40:11 | |
because we'd all be laughing and joking, and talking together, | 0:40:11 | 0:40:14 | |
and there'd be a cup of tea on, and so you'd have your cup of tea. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
And then afterwards, those who hadn't cooked... | 0:40:23 | 0:40:27 | |
would do the washing up. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:28 | |
It was fun, it was enjoyment, and... | 0:40:31 | 0:40:35 | |
in spite of my efforts today, we all learnt a lot, | 0:40:35 | 0:40:40 | |
and I think you would find that most of the lads and the girls that we used to go around with, | 0:40:40 | 0:40:48 | |
we all learnt our elementary cooking here. | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
-COMMENTATOR: -'Hostelling is an experience that many of us have enjoyed at some time or another. | 0:40:54 | 0:41:00 | |
'For some, it is an occasional pleasure...' | 0:41:00 | 0:41:03 | |
Of the promotional output from the 1960s, one film stood out - The Hostellers. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:09 | |
A quietly subversive film, it began to ask some serious questions of the YHA's aging hierarchy. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:15 | |
It focused on the building of the first ever floating hostel in England, | 0:41:15 | 0:41:19 | |
and featured a young hosteller from Yorkshire called Ken Moody. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:23 | |
"I'm 19 now. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:25 | |
"I've been hostelling for six years. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
"I help other people organise their holidays on the waterways. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:31 | |
"I see other people having their holidays and think, | 0:41:31 | 0:41:34 | |
""What a stuffy kind of holiday."" | 0:41:34 | 0:41:35 | |
Ken had been one of the founding members of the floating hostel, | 0:41:39 | 0:41:42 | |
Sabrina, and was instrumental in helping to kit it out. | 0:41:42 | 0:41:46 | |
For a month in the summer of 1964, | 0:41:46 | 0:41:48 | |
he would find his views on the YHA's establishment under careful scrutiny. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:53 | |
"I meet everybody I know through the YHA. | 0:41:55 | 0:41:58 | |
"I meet them hostelling at weekends. I go hostelling every weekend." | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
-COMMENTATOR: -'Sabrina, the first floating hostel in Britain, | 0:42:04 | 0:42:07 | |
'was converted by a local group of hostellers in their spare time.' | 0:42:07 | 0:42:11 | |
I'd been to Sweden, and I'd stayed at the floating youth hostel in Stockholm harbour, | 0:42:11 | 0:42:17 | |
so I knew it could be done. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:19 | |
So we thought we could get a Yorkshire boat, and put it... moor it at Selby on the canal, | 0:42:19 | 0:42:25 | |
and convert it into a youth hostel. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:28 | |
A contact who was a barge operator in the Selby area | 0:42:32 | 0:42:36 | |
towed it up for us - | 0:42:36 | 0:42:38 | |
pushed it in through the locks onto the canal at Selby. | 0:42:38 | 0:42:43 | |
We pulled up by rope. | 0:42:43 | 0:42:45 | |
Nearly 50 years later, Ken is preparing to go back to Selby | 0:42:49 | 0:42:52 | |
to meet the film-maker who chose him as a focal point for one of the YHA's most defining films. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:58 | |
DUCKS QUACK | 0:42:58 | 0:43:01 | |
Gloria Sachs was an assistant editor with the British Transport film unit, | 0:43:01 | 0:43:05 | |
and was looking to advance her career when she was offered the chance to direct a film, | 0:43:05 | 0:43:09 | |
part-funded by the YHA, to publicise its activities. | 0:43:09 | 0:43:14 | |
You didn't have any grey hairs when I saw you last! | 0:43:14 | 0:43:16 | |
-Hello, Gloria! I've got as many grey hairs as you now! -Not quite! -SHE CHUCKLES | 0:43:16 | 0:43:20 | |
-Hello, darling. -Lovely to see you. Lovely to see you. | 0:43:20 | 0:43:24 | |
-It's a while since we were down here. -It is. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
They used to put the boat alongside that cabin. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:32 | |
-So we were working over that side, weren't we? -Yes. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:35 | |
What happened to the boat? | 0:43:35 | 0:43:37 | |
After the YHA finished with it, it was left moored up there for a while. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:43 | |
And the local children played on it, and vandalised it, | 0:43:43 | 0:43:47 | |
and after that, it was sold to somebody who towed it away, | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
and it's now been converted back into a houseboat. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:53 | |
Why did the YHA give it up? | 0:43:53 | 0:43:55 | |
Erm...it wasn't making any money for them. | 0:43:55 | 0:43:59 | |
It wasn't up to the standard of modern hostelling. | 0:43:59 | 0:44:03 | |
It was a simple hostel. | 0:44:03 | 0:44:05 | |
After filming the sequence on Sabrina, | 0:44:13 | 0:44:16 | |
Gloria's film widened out to become something which challenged the YHA to its very core - | 0:44:16 | 0:44:21 | |
an uncensored vehicle for the views of the '60s generation, with Ken and a friend, Brian Cotton, | 0:44:21 | 0:44:27 | |
travelling around the hostels in Britain, free to say what ever they felt. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:32 | |
"You find a small percentage of wardens are real sticklers, | 0:44:35 | 0:44:40 | |
"who think they can run these hostels on the army principle. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:44 | |
"It doesn't work out at all." | 0:44:44 | 0:44:46 | |
I was very actually very bored with films that had commentaries, | 0:44:50 | 0:44:54 | |
certainly, talking about the things you could see on the screen anyway. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:58 | |
Very boring. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:00 | |
I wanted something that was a little more free, and real, actually. | 0:45:00 | 0:45:03 | |
We did interviews with them, and from those interviews, | 0:45:03 | 0:45:08 | |
we edited the verbiage, as it were, and built the film around it. | 0:45:08 | 0:45:13 | |
"I think as it's run now, the YHA is pretty sound. | 0:45:13 | 0:45:16 | |
"It's just young people aren't getting experience to take over when the time comes. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:21 | |
"They're not given the chance. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:22 | |
"You've got to get the youngsters to take responsibility, and do the jobs." | 0:45:22 | 0:45:26 | |
That's what we really did feel - we were the new young rebels of YHA! | 0:45:28 | 0:45:34 | |
We made mistakes. We said the wrong things. We didn't expect them all to be included. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:39 | |
"Sometimes we try to get young ladies to cook our meals for us. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:44 | |
"But, from bitter experience, you often find that you get a meal... | 0:45:44 | 0:45:50 | |
"that usually half of it is burnt!" | 0:45:50 | 0:45:52 | |
Filming the Hostellers took a month. | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
Improvisation was the key, even down to inventing a suitable girlfriend for Ken. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:04 | |
Rather than take a girl with us up to Scotland for the scene, | 0:46:04 | 0:46:08 | |
the assistant director had his young wife with him, who fitted the bill. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:12 | |
I leant her a bicycle. It was my father's bike. | 0:46:12 | 0:46:16 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:46:16 | 0:46:18 | |
And we put it together. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
"When you meet a girl youth hostelling, | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
"you can jolly guarantee she has the same interests as you. For a start, you've got hostelling in common." | 0:46:28 | 0:46:33 | |
To somebody who had never been hostelling, | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
it gave them, I hope, a reasonable picture of what hostelling was about. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:45 | |
Happy days! | 0:46:45 | 0:46:46 | |
Ken's influence on the YHA's promotional output didn't end there. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:57 | |
He later joined the national executive, | 0:46:57 | 0:47:00 | |
and successfully argued that members should be allowed to use cars to travel to hostels. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:05 | |
The diehards at the YHA believed that youth hostels were there for people of very limited means, | 0:47:05 | 0:47:11 | |
who cycled, walked, and didn't have cars. | 0:47:11 | 0:47:15 | |
But cars were becoming cheaper, and people were using them | 0:47:15 | 0:47:19 | |
to get to the areas where they were going walking and climbing. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:23 | |
There were people still fighting against it into the '70s and '80s. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:27 | |
But we won the battle. | 0:47:27 | 0:47:30 | |
A significant development, which would be incorporated | 0:47:30 | 0:47:33 | |
into a film at the end of the flower power era called Passport To Roam. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:38 | |
"It was Roger's idea in the first place, because, honestly, I didn't think it would appeal to me. | 0:47:38 | 0:47:45 | |
"However, he insisted, and in we went. | 0:47:45 | 0:47:48 | |
"And I don't remember much about it, except there was a room with a piano, where they had singsongs." | 0:47:48 | 0:47:53 | |
Passport To Roam was a brave attempt to bring the YHA up to the 1970s. | 0:47:53 | 0:47:59 | |
"So I thought I might as well join, as weekends have been rather dull lately." | 0:47:59 | 0:48:04 | |
They start with what really is a very posh girl, | 0:48:05 | 0:48:09 | |
who is anti-going-to-the-countryside, and her boyfriend drags her along. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:13 | |
And she's very negative - the whole film starts in a very negative way. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:17 | |
In a sense, it uses class as a tool, then proceeds to immediately misuse it. | 0:48:20 | 0:48:24 | |
I thought they were reflecting the YHA | 0:48:24 | 0:48:27 | |
as it probably wanted to be thought of, | 0:48:27 | 0:48:30 | |
as opposed to offering me a glimpse of what life might have been like. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:35 | |
Come and get your drinks, then! | 0:48:35 | 0:48:36 | |
The way in which they communicated using film was to try and fit in with that feeling of the time, | 0:48:42 | 0:48:48 | |
so people who'd slightly moved away, and were trying new things. | 0:48:48 | 0:48:52 | |
They were wanting to draw those... | 0:48:52 | 0:48:54 | |
draw those hostellers back into the organisation, | 0:48:54 | 0:48:59 | |
and to encourage people who'd never started, who'd never enjoyed the countryside, to bring them back in. | 0:48:59 | 0:49:04 | |
I found Passport To Roam excruciatingly embarrassing. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:08 | |
It seemed to bring together | 0:49:08 | 0:49:09 | |
all the sorts of people you would least want to meet, | 0:49:09 | 0:49:12 | |
doing all the sorts of things you would least want to be involved in. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:16 | |
THEY ALL SING | 0:49:16 | 0:49:17 | |
It had this caricature of the worst kind of folk club. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:22 | |
THEY ALL SING | 0:49:22 | 0:49:25 | |
Can you hang on to that? | 0:49:28 | 0:49:30 | |
What about Don't Think Twice? | 0:49:34 | 0:49:36 | |
Then, they're highlighting that there are lights out, | 0:49:36 | 0:49:42 | |
and people have to go to bed at a certain time, and the warden enforces this, | 0:49:42 | 0:49:46 | |
so they're highlighting discipline. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:48 | |
One more song, then, please, and then off to bed. | 0:49:48 | 0:49:51 | |
# We love you, Warden | 0:49:51 | 0:49:55 | |
# Oh, yes, we do... # | 0:49:55 | 0:49:57 | |
Then they bring in a pathetic, subversive response, | 0:49:57 | 0:49:59 | |
that's embarrassing in every dimension. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:03 | |
It's deeply, deeply uncool. | 0:50:03 | 0:50:05 | |
-Can I have a bottle of orange, please? -Of course. | 0:50:05 | 0:50:07 | |
-Shall I open it for you? -Yes, please. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:10 | |
'It's depicting a world' | 0:50:10 | 0:50:12 | |
which I absolutely accept might have existed in the very early 1950s. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:17 | |
That world was dead and gone by 1965. | 0:50:17 | 0:50:21 | |
'It was an anachronism on the day it was made.' | 0:50:21 | 0:50:24 | |
-Do you do much hostelling? -Quite a bit. | 0:50:24 | 0:50:26 | |
I did something you'd enjoy. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:27 | |
The promotional films had always been a mixture of the amateur and professional, | 0:50:27 | 0:50:33 | |
but throughout the '70s and early '80s, they appeared to stagnate. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
More films like Passport to Rome, | 0:50:36 | 0:50:38 | |
featuring the hostellers themselves in predictable trips around the countryside, | 0:50:38 | 0:50:43 | |
failed to chime with the increasingly sophisticated visual demands | 0:50:43 | 0:50:47 | |
of the TV-watching generation. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:49 | |
COMMENTATOR: 'Some hostellers travel by bike, bus, train, or car. | 0:50:49 | 0:50:54 | |
'How they travel, and how they spend their time, is entirely up to them.' | 0:50:54 | 0:51:00 | |
The YHA began to reposition itself as a place for families, instead of just the young. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:05 | |
Later, the chores would be sacrificed to health and safety, and the ban on alcohol lifted. | 0:51:05 | 0:51:10 | |
The films of the '70s are about the increasing pressure | 0:51:10 | 0:51:15 | |
to conform and consume, | 0:51:15 | 0:51:17 | |
in terms of how you present yourself, in terms of what you're interested in, | 0:51:17 | 0:51:21 | |
and it's difficult for the YHA, actually, to slot into that. | 0:51:21 | 0:51:26 | |
So the problem is, | 0:51:26 | 0:51:28 | |
do you try to cling on to your existing constituency which is perhaps getting smaller? | 0:51:28 | 0:51:34 | |
Do you try to reach out more broadly? | 0:51:34 | 0:51:36 | |
If you want to reach out more broadly, what do you do? | 0:51:36 | 0:51:39 | |
A radical rethink was needed, | 0:51:43 | 0:51:45 | |
and it came with a ground-breaking film in 1984, | 0:51:45 | 0:51:48 | |
which featured actors from the hit children's programme Grange Hill. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:52 | |
Enter The Adventure was commissioned by former YHA chairman Hedley Alcock. | 0:51:52 | 0:51:57 | |
I'm asking you. | 0:51:57 | 0:51:58 | |
'I'll give you a clue.' | 0:51:58 | 0:52:00 | |
ELECTRONIC CHIMING | 0:52:02 | 0:52:04 | |
It went modern, it went directly to using a computer. | 0:52:06 | 0:52:10 | |
We were using professional people, and we were aiming straight at modern, young people. | 0:52:10 | 0:52:16 | |
It talked to them in their own language. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
Press enter. | 0:52:19 | 0:52:20 | |
Not only did Enter The Adventure try to answer the specific needs of a new generation of teenagers, | 0:52:28 | 0:52:33 | |
but to reflect the wider changes in society too. | 0:52:33 | 0:52:37 | |
Totally different, and the new friend was a coloured guy. | 0:52:37 | 0:52:41 | |
That's another shift, | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
and again, it's emphasising that the youth hostel movement is universal, it's open to all. | 0:52:44 | 0:52:50 | |
As well as trying to prise youngsters away from their TVs and fledgling computer games, | 0:52:52 | 0:52:57 | |
the association was also struggling with the competition of cheap family holidays abroad. | 0:52:57 | 0:53:01 | |
This was the era when it became possible for ordinary, working people | 0:53:01 | 0:53:06 | |
to go out and have a fortnight's holiday in Spain. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:09 | |
We needed people to use and stay in our hostels. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:12 | |
It was no longer the... | 0:53:12 | 0:53:14 | |
the singsong in the common room in the evening. | 0:53:14 | 0:53:18 | |
It was no longer the make-it... do-it-yourself entertainment. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:22 | |
You tell me. | 0:53:22 | 0:53:23 | |
For actor Lee MacDonald, it was a chance to get away from his Grange Hill character Zammo. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:33 | |
Whoa! Steady! HORSE NEIGHS | 0:53:33 | 0:53:35 | |
I'm like a London lad, and everything was London and inner-London, | 0:53:37 | 0:53:40 | |
and I didn't see much of the countryside, except mum's caravan. It was just different, | 0:53:40 | 0:53:45 | |
and it just showed you that you could go off, and it wasn't expensive, | 0:53:45 | 0:53:49 | |
and you could enjoy yourself in the country. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:51 | |
I think that was my first awareness of youth hostels, | 0:53:51 | 0:53:54 | |
and that I could do it, and friends of mine could do it, and get involved. | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
Would Big Brother like to get me out of this? | 0:53:59 | 0:54:01 | |
When I got the part, it was so different than normal - you'd normally go and say your lines. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:08 | |
This was to go off, and do activities, which was really good. | 0:54:08 | 0:54:11 | |
There was canoeing and cycling and horse riding. I wanted horse-riding. | 0:54:11 | 0:54:15 | |
I've loved horse-riding since then. I got horse-riding, which was brilliant. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:20 | |
I think there's always a need to get kids out, you know, | 0:54:22 | 0:54:26 | |
into doing activities and stuff, and I think more so now than back then. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:31 | |
I think there are so many computer games and stuff now, more than there was then, | 0:54:31 | 0:54:35 | |
youth hostels should get out there, and blitz the kids, and get them out and doing stuff. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:40 | |
Today, as the youth hostelling movement celebrates its 100th birthday, | 0:54:46 | 0:54:50 | |
it's still using film to spread its message, but gone are the old-fashioned dramas, | 0:54:50 | 0:54:54 | |
and lingering images of the countryside. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:57 | |
If you can't get the message over in five minutes, | 0:54:57 | 0:54:59 | |
almost the message is dead in the water. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:02 | |
It's the delivery of that film, and how we present it. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:06 | |
We probably are gonna need to deliver messages via young people's mobile phones, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:10 | |
but that will be taking | 0:55:10 | 0:55:12 | |
that tradition on into the future, and actually delivering it | 0:55:12 | 0:55:16 | |
direct to the end user. | 0:55:16 | 0:55:18 | |
But while the fabric of the Youth Hostel Association remains essentially the same, | 0:55:21 | 0:55:25 | |
the social conditions in which it exists have been totally transformed. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:29 | |
And for lifelong member Dr Graham Pink, the future is something he's willing to invest in. | 0:55:31 | 0:55:36 | |
He's spent a quarter of a million pounds of his own money | 0:55:36 | 0:55:39 | |
on helping to refurbish Keswick youth hostel in the Lake District, | 0:55:39 | 0:55:43 | |
hoping it'll be part of a vibrant hostelling network | 0:55:43 | 0:55:46 | |
available for young people | 0:55:46 | 0:55:48 | |
with limited means for many years to come. | 0:55:48 | 0:55:52 | |
This is an example of what can be done with a very old building, | 0:55:52 | 0:55:55 | |
and turning it into a very nice, modern youth hostel for the 21st century. | 0:55:55 | 0:56:01 | |
When I offered to make a contribution to the YHA, I thought, | 0:56:06 | 0:56:11 | |
"I don't want to leave it until I die, | 0:56:11 | 0:56:13 | |
"I'd rather give it while I'm still alive, and I can see the results of it." | 0:56:13 | 0:56:17 | |
And this is exactly what I've got here. | 0:56:17 | 0:56:20 | |
It's very rewarding to come back, and see the excellent work they've done, | 0:56:20 | 0:56:24 | |
see the enjoyment that young people have, | 0:56:24 | 0:56:27 | |
and particularly youngsters that come here - | 0:56:27 | 0:56:29 | |
they most likely don't appreciate what it was like in the olden days. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:33 | |
They've made an excellent job of it, and it's nice to know that they are perhaps learning to use hostels, | 0:56:33 | 0:56:39 | |
and get the pleasure out of them that I had 60, 70 years ago. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:43 | |
The promotional films of the YHA, intended as a positive vision of the future, | 0:56:49 | 0:56:54 | |
have succeeded in capturing key elements of our past, | 0:56:54 | 0:56:56 | |
a past in which our ideas of youth and freedom, | 0:56:56 | 0:57:01 | |
adventure and independence have changed beyond recognition. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:06 | |
I think the YHA has become inevitably more middle-class, | 0:57:07 | 0:57:11 | |
and perhaps more conformist in all sorts of ways, including being conformist to consumerism. | 0:57:11 | 0:57:19 | |
I think it's had to. It would have gone to the wall if it hadn't. | 0:57:19 | 0:57:22 | |
I think its future is very different from its origins. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:25 | |
This was very early environmentalism. | 0:57:28 | 0:57:30 | |
The environmental movement, not based on science, | 0:57:30 | 0:57:33 | |
but based on an instinct that there was a lot to be gained from nature, | 0:57:33 | 0:57:37 | |
and that men and women within nature was a place | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
where your better instincts were likely to be stimulated. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:44 | |
Here we have a youth organisation that started internationally, | 0:57:57 | 0:58:01 | |
moved to Britain, | 0:58:01 | 0:58:02 | |
and they followed its development through the 20th century on film. | 0:58:02 | 0:58:06 | |
There's hardly any other collection that reflects that sort of enthusiasm for film, | 0:58:06 | 0:58:11 | |
and that very one-dimensional look at an organisation in the same way. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:17 | |
It spans an organisation's history through film. | 0:58:17 | 0:58:20 | |
MUSIC PLAYS OVER SINGING | 0:58:22 | 0:58:25 | |
Good night, all. | 0:58:28 | 0:58:29 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:49 | 0:58:52 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:52 | 0:58:55 |