The Box is a major cultural and heritage attraction and archive, which opened in Plymouth’s city centre in September 2020. Its collection, formally the South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA), is the regional film archive for the South West of England, comprising the combined programme libraries of Westward Television and Television South West (TSW). It also includes a significant number of donated film collections dating back to the early 1890s.
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A Beatnik Community in St Agnes
A Beatnik community sets up in St Agnes against local wishes
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Overview
TV reporter Del Cooper visits St Agnes to talk to members of a beatnik community and locals to hear the juxtaposition of views. Forty or so Beatniks, among them twelve children rent holiday cottages for the winter season. The community is an artistic, literary and religious group of free thinkers, all vegetarian. Predictably, the villagers are not convinced and hope to oust the non-conformists and their antisocial behaviour before the all-important tourist season.
The portmanteau Beatnik was first coined in 1958 by San Francisco columnist Herb Caen when he combined Beat Generation with nik after the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik I. Following on from the Jack Kerouac-inspired anti-materialistic literary movement, the unconventional clothing and burning of jos sticks have this group of Beatniks banned from the local pub. Long hair, berets, denim, sandals, single mums as well as new thinking towards society, marriage and employment mean our artists induce suspicion from Stagnesians and this film allows the viewer an insight into perceptions and society’s ability to stereotype constantly.
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