The rather poor quality vintage home movie featured in this post was taken in 1964 in the city of Brussels and at the site of the World's Fair which had been held there in 1958.
About the film
The film was part of a collection I purchased from eBay which consisted of several reels of standard 8 film, all produced in the early 1960s. This particular film is labelled 1964, and is a 5 inch reel with about 200 feet, or 4 standard 8mm films on.
As I said above, time has not been good to this film and there are sections where most of the colour has been bleached out, although this has not affected all pigments the same. In some section almost all the colour is got except the red objects which still stand out as brightly red colour! In these parts it looks like a modern photoshop effect where only one colour is preserved.
Still images from the film.
The gallery below shows some images of the film which I've taken as screen shots. These include images of Brussels, the Grand Place, the World's Fair Atomium and Ostend.
The Film of Brussels and the World's Fair site
The film of Brussels is shown below.
It starts in the Grand Place and shows scenes around the streets of Brussels before moving to the Atomium which was part of the World's Fair of 1958. In fact, looking at some pictures of that event from 1958 I saw women dressed in the same Red Jacket which the lady with the camera in front of the coach was wearing and originally I thought the film had been taken at that show. Since the date on the film said 1964 however, I've assumed that is a coincidence and she is possibly a tour guide.
One of the most amusing scenes in the film is of the boys who have built a pedal car which they are driving around the streets of the city and come quite close to hitting a car coming down the street towards them!
After the scenes around the city, the film spends quite a bit of time on the homeward voyage in a ship called the Koningin Elizabeth which was used as a ferry from Ostend to Dover from 1957 to 1968.
[…] 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 […]