21 hours of Yorkshire’s moving image heritage goes online (12/05/2010)
The YORKSHIRE FILM ARCHIVE (YFA) is delighted to announce the launch of their new, interactive, moving image website, YFA ONLINE, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund. To tie in with YFA's 21st Birthday celebrations, YFA Online will initially feature 21 hours of fascinating films, background information and images showcasing Yorkshire's rich heritage. Everyone can now log on at www.yfaonline.com to view and learn about films from the YFA's vast collections.
Fiona Spiers, Heritage Lottery Fund Manager for Yorkshire and the Humber, said:
"The YFA collections provide a unique snapshot of life in the Yorkshire region over the past century and YFA Online is a great way to make these films even more accessible illustrating Yorkshire's diversity, distinctiveness and culture."
YFA has had the continued support of Yorkshire Forward and Screen Yorkshire, who have been central in developing and highlighting innovative ways of using archive footage for audiences across the region, so opening up the collections to online users is another great step forward.
The selection of film and video encoded for online use date from the early days of film making to the present day and includes newsreels, documentaries, promotional films, home movies, animation and much more all chosen with help from audiences across Yorkshire. The website features rare footage of Queen Victoria visiting Sheffield in 1897, the pioneering filmmakers of Bamforth and Company, our region's industrial powers of steel, textiles, farming and fishing, a royal visit from Charles and Diana to Leeds in 1982, home movies to the Yorkshire coast, wartime footage and more recent films including the Castleford Tigers Wembley dream from 1999.
Graham Relton, YFA Online Project Manager said:
"YFA Online is a window into Yorkshire's moving image heritage. It is easy to use and is has a wide range of films that reflect Yorkshire life, landscape and culture. Users are able to see snapshots of history come to life, learn more about these films and add their own memories and information, I am confident there is something for everyone."
The YFA have been working closely with partners across the region including the National Media Museum in Bradford, Hull History Service, Showroom cinema in Sheffield and Rural Arts North Yorkshire to ensure YFA Online contains what the people of Yorkshire want to see and by summer 2010 each partner will have a YFA Online permanent access point open to the public.
You can browse the resource by decade, theme or area and discover more about each film from the ‘context' sections which are crammed with useful information about the content of the film, whom it was made by and when it was made. The site is free to use and if you register you can bookmark your favourites or add information and upload images relating to the films. The YFA are keen for users to provide information about the films, to add their local knowledge, memories and photographs to the website via the ‘Open Space' section.
In addition to YFA Online, the YFA have created YFA Online Learning; a cross-curricular moving image resource for education practitioners full of clips designed for educational use. The clips featured on the site have been selected with the National Curriculum in mind and cover a wide spectrum of historical, geographical, social and cultural content. YFA Online Learning is an interactive site where teachers and learners can download and use the films creatively, uploading their own uses and activities onto the site for others to share.
YFA Online, the Yorkshire Film Archive's new moving image resource is packed with 21 hours of footage, but this is just the beginning; YFA Online will have over 50 hours of film freely available online by summer 2010- that's hundreds of films capturing our regions rich heritage over the last 100 years. YFA Online is a user friendly dynamic resource that users can enjoy, learn from and contribute to. www.yfaonline.com
