MORE than 150 hours of rarely seen footage featuring scenes from across Essex is set to be unveiled in Colchester this weekend.

The University of East Anglia is launching its Digital Film Archive, the culmination of a major digitalisation project which will take thousands of people on a nostalgic journey.

For the past two years, archivists at the University of East Anglia’s East Anglian Film Archive has been cataloguing and digitising hundreds of hours of historic movie footage.

Professor John Charmley, associate dean of enterprise and engagement at the university, says the proejct brings history alive.

“For the First time, people will have direct access to moving images of their own Heritage,” he says.

“It has been 70 years since anyone has been able to view some of these films, making this an important moment in terms of the social history of our region.”

The project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, University of East Anglia and Screen Heritage UK, will also open up hundreds of hours of footage for academic research.

Film gems from Essex include rare footage of 101 Dalmatians author and Finchingfield resident Dodie Smith, Essex County Cricket Club taking on the Australians in a pre-Ashes match in 1948 and children attending a Colchester movie matinee in 1914.

There is also footage of the opening of Braintree’s Town Hall in 1928 and the crowning of Great Britain’s Ideal Holiday Girl in Clacton in 1961, as well as the recollections of people who lived through the Essex earthquake of 1884, which caused great devastation to Colchester, with its epicentre in Wivenhoe and the surrounding villages.

The quake lasted for around 20 seconds and measured 5.1 on the Richter scale.

In terms of the destruction it caused, it remains the most destructive earthquake to have hit the UK in at least the last 400 years, since the Dover Straits earthquake of 1580.

Prof Charmley says: “Some of the content is extremely important in terms of academic research.

“It can tell us about our past in ways written records simply cannot.”

The film project will enable the archive to collaborate on a number of new research projects and will form a key part of the university’s enterprise and engagement outreach activities.

A new website will also contain footage from every decade of the 20th century and can be browsed at www.eafa.org.uk Richard Taylor, director of East Anglian Film Archive, said the website, while incredibly important, was just the tip of the iceberg.

“What the project has done is extremely important for the future of the archive,” he said. “We now understand the nature of the collection.

“The archive was established as a repository of the region’s heritage, now we’re unlocking it by making much of it available online, with more to come.”

A series of partnerships have been developed with venues across the region, including Colchester’s Firstsite Gallery and the Essex Record Office, in Chelmsford, which will house special mobile film show units and provide special film shows.

The footage will get an airing as part of Firstsite’s regular archive film screening on Sunday, from 2.30pm to 3.30pm, and on Sunday, January 8, at the same time. Admission to both events is free.