Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 21672 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| A TALE OF THE UNEXPECTED | 1985 | 1985-01-01 |
|
Details
Original Format: Super 8 Colour: Colour Sound: Sound Duration: 3 mins 19 secs Credits: Organisation: Cleveland Cine Club Individuals: Betty Cook, Leonard Winter Genre: Amateur Subject: Family Life |
| Summary A short comedy by Betty Cook and members of Cleveland Cine Club about a man (Leonard Winter) walking into a park to draw a picture of a scene on a pad of paper that, as it develops, turns into something 'unexpected'. |
|
Description
A short comedy by Betty Cook and members of Cleveland Cine Club about a man (Leonard Winter) walking into a park to draw a picture of a scene on a pad of paper that, as it develops, turns into something 'unexpected'.
Title: Cleveland Cine Club
Title: Presents
Title: A Tale of the Unexpected
The film opens in a tree-lined park known as The Avenue of Trees in Acklam, Middlesbrough, with a man (Leonard) wearing a beret walking along a path. Under his arm he carries a pad of paper....
A short comedy by Betty Cook and members of Cleveland Cine Club about a man (Leonard Winter) walking into a park to draw a picture of a scene on a pad of paper that, as it develops, turns into something 'unexpected'.
Title: Cleveland Cine Club
Title: Presents
Title: A Tale of the Unexpected
The film opens in a tree-lined park known as The Avenue of Trees in Acklam, Middlesbrough, with a man (Leonard) wearing a beret walking along a path. Under his arm he carries a pad of paper. He comes to sit on a stump of a tree, look across the surrounding scenery know as Sandy Flats and begins to draw a picture with a pencil of trees on a hill in the distance.
As the picture of what appears to be trees in a wooded area develops, he adds colour to the scene. A man and his two sons appear and look down on the man drawing the picture.
The picture has changed with what was once a tree now the tail of a horse pointing upwards trotting across the landscape. At the bottom of the drawing, the artist has written ‘A Tail of the Unexpected’.
Title: The end.
Context
Taking a line for a gallop
An old artist discovers his animalistic instinct when he attempts a plein air sketch in Middlesbrough.
A landscape artist has a brush with the wild beasts of his imagination when he picks a spot to sketch with a view of the Cleveland Hills. He turns his back on a modern 60s school in Middlesbrough (all those Mondrian squares) and looks to the natural world with an upbeat Fauvist flourish. There’s a mildly unexpected twist ending to this cine club short by Betty...
Taking a line for a gallop
An old artist discovers his animalistic instinct when he attempts a plein air sketch in Middlesbrough. A landscape artist has a brush with the wild beasts of his imagination when he picks a spot to sketch with a view of the Cleveland Hills. He turns his back on a modern 60s school in Middlesbrough (all those Mondrian squares) and looks to the natural world with an upbeat Fauvist flourish. There’s a mildly unexpected twist ending to this cine club short by Betty Cook, filmed around Acklam Hall and the King’s Manor and Hall Garth schools. As President of the Cleveland Cine Club and the North East Cine Society, the amateur film-maker Betty Cook was immersed in local film production and made her own home movies from the 1960s through to the 1980s. The title of this film may be a nod to the ITV adaptations of Roald Dahl’s ‘Tales of the Unexpected’, which aired on British television between 1979 and 1988. Betty Cook's star was Leonard Winter, a talented cine enthusiast himself, who made many 9.5mm movies between the 1930s and 70s. He moved north to Middlesbrough in the late 1940s and appeared in several Cleveland Cine Club productions, including a sinister film called The Glade (1975) also available on BFI Player. |
