Description: Film opens with a panning shot of a wall introducing the film and with the credits for the film written on it in white. Accordion music plays and voices can be heard in the background. A young boy sits against the wall then walk along, kicking over a bucket and broom and writes on the wall in chalk. The end of the wall says ‘Thanks to our headmaster’.

46” Footage of a busy market with the boy walking towards the camera. The shop, Burnards, can be seen in the background. The market is East Street market and Burnards a hardware shop on East Lane, Walworth (http://walworthsaintpeter.blogspot.com/2013/12/memories-of-walworth-childhood-1945-1965.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Street_Market). Music soundtrack continues with the sound of voices. Further footage of the market and its people. Two boys rest a tandem bike up against a stall and walk off. The original boy steals it but is caught by two men. There is a tussle and the boy is marched through the streets to his home (soundtrack plays piano version of Maybe it’s Because I’m a Londoner). His mother answers the door and the man talks to her and leaves.

3’25” We see a hand push the boy to the floor of a room and the door closes, shutting him in. The boy can’t get out. He sits on the bed with his dog looking fed up. He lights and smokes a cigarette. Hi climbs out of the window (taking a trophy with him) onto the roof. He puts the trophy in his shirt, climbs down from the roof, runs through the garden and over the back wall. We see him running through the residential streets. He looks behind him as if to see if anyone is following.

7’15” He walks out of the gate of a timber yard and over a bridge over a canal/river in an industrial looking area. (Soundtrack of Knees up Mother Brown played on the piano). 7’53”. The boy walks up some steps (of a church?) and sits down by a large pillar. He stands up and smiles when he sees a rag-and bone man with a horse and cart going past. He shows the trophy to the man who gives him some money for it. He walks along tossing the coin and then puts it in his pocket.

9’16” A small gang of boys and girls stand and sit by the roadside. They start looking and pointing down the street (at the boy) and have a heated conversation. Most of the gang walk off down an alley but two wait and then follow the boy as he walks down the alley. The boy notices the two boys behind him and starts running but he’s caught by the other gang members who steal his things and beat him up. They smash a glass bottle on the ground and threaten him (increasingly dramatic drum music plays). They drag the boy back out onto the street and a gang member counts his money.

12’04” The gang drag and carry the boy using force, to a derelict building site (the sound of children’s voices plays). They continue to beat him up. Until they see something and run away. Some other boys and girls come and try to help the boy up. Some of the boys run off, one of them falling and hurting his ankle. Some girls help drag/carry the boy off the building site and sit him against a wall. He shows them his empty pockets and waves two of them off to try to find his money or the people that robbed him.

15’36” Some boys see some of the gang and start chasing them (more drumming music plays). They jump over a wall and keep running. We see the chase shot from above (very poor quality). The chase continues through an estate and the two girls looking for the gang join in. The two groups fight by a canal. 18’22” One boy falls in and emerges covered in vegetation. The fight continues until the gang members are defeated and the boy’s money and possessions are retrieved. The victorious boys and girls walk off (My Old Man Said Follow the Van plays).

19’29” They return the boys possessions to him and after a discussion they all walk off together and find the horse and cart the boy sold his trophy to. One of the girls buys it back for the boy and they wave off the horse and cart.

21’21” The children walk back to the boy’s home. 21’39” They help him over the back wall with his trophy (The Lambeth Walk plays in the background). Smiling, they wave goodbye to each other. The boy climbs up the outside of the house onto the roof and through his bedroom window. He waves and shuts the window.

22’38” The End is painted on a wall in white. The shot pans to another part of the wall saying Edited By with a list of names. The names are difficult to make out. One looks like David Gregan.

Background to the film:

“The film was made by teacher Simon Clements and his third year class at Walworth School in Southwark over the academic year 1961/2. Inspired by colleagues in the London Association for the Teaching of English, the film was a product of the progressive teaching environment at Walworth School where Clements and colleagues were working to reimagine what English teaching could be” (Institute of Education, 2014)

The film was uncovered as a result of research undertaken for the Leverhulme Trust-funded ‘Social Change and English: a Study of Three London Schools 1945-1965’ project and was supported by follow-on funding at the Institute of Education who organised the first screening of the film in 2014, over fifty years after it was first shown. The following are notes that Southwark Local History Library and Archive made from the screening in 2014.

Simon Clements said he went to a meeting of the London Association of Teachers of English (LATE) where and English teacher talked about a film he had made with his students and Simon decided to try to do the same. He approached the head, Mr Rogers, who approved, and they timetabled it for the double-period on Wednesday mornings.

The class were able to fund the project by starting their own company – Young Efforts Film Company, from which they sold shares to family and friends.

Once they had decided on the story, the class made four expeditions – north, south, east and west from the school – to find and photograph locations for each scene.

Simon did not know that the camera they used needed to be wound up. When it stopped working, he assumed it was broken, and the project was over. Luckily, one of the pupils knew how to wind it.

They did the actual filming at half term. Some of the girls were responsible for continuity. Simon Clements did some safety checks, such as making sure they could film out of the tower block staircase without leaning too far, and also holding the end of the rope around the ‘stuntman’s’ waist when he went in the canal. The splash for the boy falling in was achieved by throwing a sack full of bricks and rubble into the canal.

Scenes seem to have been shot in sequence; they were not sure if they would be able to find the rag-and-bone man again for his second appearance.

The front of the hero’s house was in Blackwood Street. The back of it was a house off Lynton road, which survives today (2014).

Simon Clements was a friend of the photographer Roger Mayne, but he was proud to say that he had never looked through the camera during filming; it was all the students’ work. He did suggest that they vary the level of the camera, and this led to the chase being filmed from the tower block, and also the next scene where the boys are running over the top of the camera.

Editing the film was very difficult, as they could only just get it spliced together, and it broke frequently.

The soundtrack took longer than the filming; the pupils wanted cockney songs, so they recorded a teacher playing the piano. Street sounds were harvested by hanging a microphone out of the window on breaks at the school. They used a drummer for the ambush scene.

The film only had one showing, because it was so fragile. (Eventually they had a copy made.) This was a showing for parents and sponsors in the school hall. There was no publicity, and pupils from other classes did not know about it. After the screening, one of the fathers stood up and proposed that the shareholders all surrender their shares. Mr Clements was very relieved, because this meant he did not have to pay them back for the camera.

Further information about the film in the context of the history of English teaching can be found in the book ‘English Teachers in a Post-war Democracy: Emerging Choice in London Schools, 1945-1965 by Medway, P., Hardcastle, J., Brewis, G., and Crook, D. (2014) New York: Palgrave Macmillan. The film is discussed in the book and the cover photo is of Simon Clements

Film Screening in 2014

The film screening took place on Thursday 26 June 2014 at Shortwave Cinema, 10 Bermondsey Square, Bermondsey, London Se1 3UN. Before the screening there was a short talk, ‘New Realism, New Waves and the New English’ by Dr Mary Irwin from Northumbria University, which reflected on the particular post-was political, social and cultural milieu which shaped Simon Clements, his teaching and the film that he eventually produced.

After the film was screened, there was a panel discussion with Professor Cathy Burke (University of Cambridge), Alal Haque (English teacher, Kingsley Academy, Hounslow), Dr Mary Irwin (Northumbria University) and Barry Willis (former pupil at Walworth School) with questions and comment from the audience.

Article in the South London Press

On Tuesday 31 July 1962, the South London Press ran an article about the film, the content of which is as follows:

“No millions needed for this film.

Pupils of Form III C of Walworth School, Mina Rd, have formed a Young Efforts Film Company to raise money. The 33 boys and girls in the class, all aged 14, are being supervised by Simon Clements (27), their form master.

In March he asked the pupils to write a story for a film. He said of it ‘They decided on the story. Then parts and jobs such as cameraman, director and producer were allotted’.

The school supplied a pre-war camera but there was still money needed. ‘So the class formed itself into a company and issued shares to parents and friends’ said Mr Clements.

‘They will repay the shareholders later. The idea is that we should charge to see the film. In this was they are learning how companies operate and about stocks and shares.’

The film tells the story of a boy who runs away from home and gets into trouble with a gang.

The director is Tony Clark, of Crosby Row, Southwark, and the producer Hugh Hamilton of East Street, Walworth.

During this term the class has spent a day a week taking scenes in South London streets.

The picture show on of the scenes of the film; a cup being handed back to Lawrence Todd who has attempted to dispose of it.

On the cart is Mrs Dorothy Wallington who works with her husband in Southwark as a dealer and who takes the part of a dealer in the film. On the left is the camera”