By Nichola Court, Archivist
In 2024, WSRO hosted a visit from students at The Academy, Selsey, who were involved in a project guided by Millstream Productions to create a documentary film about the history of Selsey Pavilion. The film forms part of the restoration project led by Selsey Pavilion Trust.
Following on from their initial visit, the students invited us to take part in their documentary and, on 31st March, the group returned to WSRO – this time, with large numbers of cameras, lights and microphones! The students led every aspect of the day, from scheduling to recording, writing questions and choosing which documents to feature. They were particularly interested in highlighting the town’s connection to the British Union of Fascists movement in the 1930s, and featured documents from our collections which provide evidence of this.
Although WSRO has played host to film crews before, we’ve never had such a large crew onsite and while it was a bit of a squeeze at times, we were delighted to be involved and to support this innovative and exciting project. The students’ finished film premiered at the Pavilion on 12th June and is now available to watch online, alongside a short ‘making of’ feature.
You can find out more about the restoration of Selsey Pavilion via the Selsey Pavilion Trust’s website, https://www.selseypavilion.org/.
Selsey Pavilion: The Journey So Far can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncqWv5F4nwQ.
Selsey Pavilion: The Making of the Journey So Far can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPX6gjwf26k.
You can find out more about Fascist activities in West Sussex by reading our previous blog, https://westsussexrecordofficeblog.com/2019/09/20/documenting-fascism-in-1930s-west-sussex/.
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