A glimpse of India

Kevin Greenbank, archivist at the Centre of South Asian Studies, explores the ways in which the home movie offers fascinating insights into the lives of those in front of, and behind, the camera - as rare footage of a 1935 Raj picnic shows. The Collection is perhaps most interesting when the films reveal something unintended by the film-maker - Kevin Greenbank For most people, owning a mobile phone also means owning a video camera. There is no cost at all in sharing with others the scenes you film, thanks to YouTube and other such sites, so you can film nearly everything you do. In 1935, this was not the case. A cine film camera was expensive, film was not cheap and developing it was particularly pricey. You could not waste hours of expensive film waiting for your cat to do something funny, your baby to belch hilariously or some stranger's dog to chase deer across a national park. People filming home movies had, therefore, to be more selective about what they filmed.