Sports Day, 1962, and another Austrian holiday

Sharp-eyed readers of “The Old Burian Magazine” archive may have spotted this paragraph from the 1991 Magazine and wondered if those tapes/cine films were still around. Well, we’re very pleased to say that they are.

Thanks to Ian Fish, who has kept a copy of the VHS tape since that time, we have been able to digitise copies of the three cine films, two of which you can watch below. Unfortunately, due to some of the content falling foul of YouTube policies (drinking and smoking in the context of young people, albeit in a comedy setting) we have had to forgo posting “Mischief Afoot” on the website. DVD copies could be made available if any members are interested. Meanwhile, we will consider producing an edited version of the film which will at least allow you to see the characters involved as well as the school as it was in the 1960s, even if the storyline suffers.

The 35-year-old VHS tape, with content already around 30 years old, had survived fairly well, but some jitter and other glitches were to be expected. The colour cine films had also suffered quite severe fading and had strong colour casts in places before they were transferred to VHS.

We have done our best to minimise these problems, but you will still have to make allowances for the age of the materials and the relatively basic resources available at the time they were filmed. Most importantly, though, they give us another glimpse of the old school and some of its people, which we hope you will enjoy.

Holiday in Saalbach, Austria – 1961

We were privileged to have a previous film of this event by Paul Lilly, which can be found here. We believe this second film was from the camera of Ken Gorman. You can read an account of the holiday from “The Burian” Magazine of January 1962 here. Curiously, that account names different staff from those mentioned above – perhaps if you were there you can throw some light on that?

School Sports Day, 1962

An account of the 1962 Sports Day, with all of the winners, was published in the September 1962 Burian Magazine, reproduced below (click on the images to enlarge).