FAIRGROUND cinema makes a return to Harwich after more than 110 years.

A travelling cinema style bioscope has been built and set up on Harwich Green for a 10 day showcase.

The lights came on last night for the first show, An Edwardian Bioscope, which saw film prints hand cranked through an original 1912 projector.

The rest of the event will see a range of films shown at the marquee-covered Charles Thurston Bioscope cinema, which has been organised as the historic Electric Palace has now closed for refurbishment.

On Thursday author and historian David Cleveland will present a series of film footage showing events in Harwich and Dovercourt from 1924 to 1985.

David has dusted off films from the Paul Amos archives of the 1930s and 1950s will include what Dovercourt looked like in the Jubilee year of 1935, wartime with a film of the building and placing of the Roughs Fort off Harwich in 1942, the 1953 flood, the football club, the new skating rink, and the summer carnival of 1959.

He will also show the drama Hill and High Water, made by pupils of Hill Secondary Modern School in 1954, and a colour film made in 1975 showing the Harwich Electric Palace as discovered in a state of disrepair.

Mr Cleveland said: “On Thursday, in the Bioscope tent on Harwich Green, archive films of Harwich and Dovercourt and the connection with the sea will be shown.

“Local resident Paul Amos, who died in 2017, not only collected films of the area, but took films himself, and a recording of Paul talking over some scenes he filmed in the 1950s will be included.”

The films will be shown at 2.30pm and 5.30pm. Tickets are £10.

For all ticket information visit electricpalace.com

PROGRAMME:

  • Today 3pm - screenwriter Mark Tilton will talk about writing for short films. There will also be a screening of his film infidel, which won best UK short film at Raindance Film Festival. Tickets are £7.
  • Today 7pm, as well as Saturday, Sunday and on June 30 at midday -Short films created by residents for the Harwich Festival
  • Saturday 2pm - Paddington 2
  • Saturday 7.30pm Brief Encounter - a classic romantic drama set in 1945 during WWII in and around the fictional Milford railway station.
  • Sunday 5pm – Zama, based on the novel by Antonio Di Benedetto written in 1956
  • Sunday 7.30pm – black and white 1935 film captain blood starring Errol Flynn.
  • Tuesday 5pm - Yangtse Incident: The Story of HMS Amethyst.
  • Tuesday 7.30pm - Harwich In Wartime. Submarines And Food
  • A selection of archive films from the Imperial war Museum vaults that share the story of the German U Boat campaign in the First World War. A mix of propaganda pieces and action films about the war at sea, shipbuilding and food shortages during the war.
  • Wednesday 4pm - Resorting to the Coast (oh i do like to be beside the seaside) talk and film presented by Heritage Lottery Funded Resorting to the Coast
  • Wednesday 7.30pm 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still
  • Thursday 2.20pm and 5pm - Harwich and Dovercourt on Film.
  • Thursday 7.30pm - Harwich in Wartime. Submarines and Food
  • Friday 3pm - Marion Molteno - Afternoon With A Writer
  • Friday 7.30pm The Florida Project, 2017
  • Saturday 2pm ET The extra-terrestrial 1982
  • Saturday 7.30 1953 classic horror House of Wax
  • Sunday 3pm silent black and white Russian film telling the story of a riot on board the Battleship Potemkin