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Beach Cabin

Enjoy this candid film from Harry Guermonprez - made at Bognor Regis with beach huts and a woman in trousers who enjoys a smoke or three

Amateur film 1920 1 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for Screen Archive South East

Overview

Harry Guermonprez' remarkable short film starts with a woman exiting one of Bognor Regis' elevated beach huts. Unusually for the time, the woman, who may have been Harry's wife 'Tuki', is wearing trousers over her swimsuit and smokes a cigarette. She is also seen with a small child. Walking along the beach, still smoking, she jumps over a groyne. She is then seen, without trousers, walking into the sea for a paddle and posing on a groyne.

Local historian and naturalist, Harry Guermonprez, who later went on to become co-founder of the Bognor Regis Film Society in 1938, was a photographer by trade. Beginning in Bognor Regis, where he managed a chemists and photography shop, he moved to Chichester, where he set up Chichester Photographic Services. After the Second World War he photographed scenes in and around the historic city, many of them for the Chichester Observer, the local newspaper. His photographic collection, consisting of hundreds of glass plate negatives, is now held at the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester.