Dundee Police Sports - 1921
ABOUT THE FILM : Dundee Police Sports
Scottish Screen Archive - National Library of ScotlandYear: 1921
The women's football team are bickering before the camera, giving each other digs with the elbows before the amused eye of their team leader. Further away, strapping men are rolling out the machines, while the referees are officiating in three piece suits. The classic sporting events (high jump, wrestling, sack race) rub shoulders with an unlikely form of boxing: two men confront one another sitting astride a beam. The last one to fall wins.
Nationality: Scottish
Length: 6' 13"
Genre: documentary
Sound: silent with soundtrack
Original elements: black & white
Composer: Eric Le Guen
Original language: English
A BRIEF HISTORY : Dundee Police Sports
The amateur Scottish film director C.F. Partoon made this report during a sporting competition organised by the police of the town of Dundee. Partoon is a local figure. His photo studio C.F. Partoon & Son is set up in Nethergate, not far from the current university. He covered this day in August 1921 with a camera on a tripod by being as attached to the protagonists as to the public. The forest of flat caps nods in agreement before the onlooker's camera. Between two rounds the Highland dances cheer up the public and the bagpipes parade around the stadium.
There remain few traces of Partoon's activity; the Scottish Screen Archive owns a second film by the photographer that was filmed during a visit by Violet Hopson (1891-1973), an American star of silent film. Called Miss Violet Hopson visits Dundee Fire Station, it was funded by La Scala, one of Dundee's many cinema houses. The town had more than twenty or so cinemas, former churches or theatres. Today most of them have been demolished or turned into shops.
