An interesting European River cruise from 1982

This post features an interesting film taken during a long river cruise through Europe in June 1982 which took in Amsterdam, the canals of Holland, the Rhine in Germany & the cities of Bonn, Nuremberg, Salzburg and Vienna.

About this film

This film was purchased as part of a set of Super 8 films from eBay.

They were all part of a collection made by the same photographer who obviously kept making films of their trips abroad long after most people had switched to video tape. I suspect that perhaps they had good equipment and a back catalogue of films and didn’t see the need to switch; from a technical viewpoint of course they were right – the quality of super 8 was far superior to any VHS camcorder available in 1982.

The other film in this set that I’ve published so far is the film of the USA which was taken in the 1990s. In contrast, this film was shot earlier in June 1982, but is of similar technical and artistic quality. Although I did run the film through a stabilizer, that was because the conversion technique I am using at the moment has imparted some jitter – the actual film was well shot and well exposed.

The film is about 25 minutes long being made up of several individual super 8 films. Fortunately, I discovered that the youtube limit of 15 minutes doesn’t apply if you have a verified account which I do((I’d not really bothered to check the 15 minute limit, I’d just assumed it was still in place from when I first started using youtube. Of course, after I discovered it didn’t apply it seems obvious – I’ve seen lots of content on youtube which is longer than 15 minutes )).

Some Still images from the river cruise film.

The images below, which were taken from the film, give a taster for the content and also the better quality of this 1982 super 8 film.

The film of the European River Cruise.

The actual film is shown below and features several famous landmarks from the various European countries the photographer passed through.

I think the thing which struck me as I watched the film was the number of places I recognised from films I’ve posted on Vintage Home Movies and photos on Found Film.

For example, at the start of the film the boat arrives at Ostend, and I remember seeing the same double spire of the church which can be seen in Ostend harbour in a film of Brussels which I posted a few weeks ago.

Later in the film, there is some footage shot at Cologne cathedral and again I remembered seeing the same large, imposing entrance to the cathedral. Sure enough, when I searched on the site I found Cologne cathedral is featured in a film of a boat cruise on the Rhine which I posted in May.

When I saw the image of Mozart’s Birthplace at about 16 minutes into the film it stirred a very recent memory because I’ve only just scanned a medium format colour slide of the same building, taken from virtually the same spot, but some 10 years previously. That picture is now on Found Film.

Hopefully you will enjoy the film below – it’s certainly of better quality than many of the standard 8 films on the site, and I’m sure you too will be able to recognise many famous scenes and places. When you recognise a landmark be sure to let me know in the comments below.