100 years of North East nature captured on film: Here's how you can see it

A powerful new film featuring 100 years of North East nature scenes has been released.

The Yorkshire and North East Film Archives had produced the documentary which they describe as 'a love letter to nature and a call to action to protect it'.

It uses over a century of archive news and documentary footage from the region and will get its premiere on October 27.

Proving that nature matters

The movie marks the launch of NEFA's Nature Matters project which explores the 'need for balance in a changing world'.

Graham Relton, Yorkshire and North East Film Archives Manager said NEFA's vaults 'hold a wealth of moving image collections that reveal a fascinating record of the very real environmental issues, causes, and concerns that people and communities have wrestled with, and championed, through the years.

“This new production is a powerful and thought-provoking outcome of the project."

A starting point for a bigger nature project

York St John University has launched Nature Matters which has been commissioned by the University’s Cinema and Social Justice project and York Business School.

Senior lecturer Dr Jenny Hall said the film 'invites us to think about sustainable ways to engage with rural landscapes and rebalance cultural, social and ecological systems.

"We see the film as a starting point to establish a wider research programme that explores how heritage archives can inform ways to live with nature.” 

Anyone wanting tickets for the launch at York St John University should reserve their place via Eventbrite.

Braving the chilly North Sea at Seaham

NEFA has previously shared some fascinating cine film insights into North East life.

They include fun at the Seaburn fairground in 1966 and Brian Clough in one of his last matches for Sunderland before the injury which put paid to his playing career.

It has also shared a selection of its Nature Matters footage including swimmers braving the North Sea at Seaham, and the earliest days of Washington New Town.

NEFA has a huge catalogue of over 70,000 items of original film, video tape, and born-digital material. Its team painstakingly preserves, catalogues, and digitises these vital collections of reminders of our past.

NEFA operates the The Yorkshire Film Archive in York, and the North East Film Archive, in Middlesbrough.

If you have cine film of Sunderland and County Durham in the past, we would love to hear from you. Email [email protected] and tell us more.