Rosie Newman

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Rosie Violet Nina Millicent Newman (born Rosie Neumann on July 25, 1896 in London , England , United Kingdom ; died on February 16, 1988 ) was a British amateur filmmaker .

Life

Rosie Newman was the daughter of Sir Sigismund Neumann (1857–1916) from Fürth , one of the so-called " Randlords " who achieved immense wealth through South African diamonds , and Anna Allegra Hakim, an Egyptian. As such, it was one of the highest circles in Britain. The resulting connections with politicians and diplomats proved to be very useful on her numerous trips.

She bought her first film camera in 1928 on a trip to Morocco . Very early on, practically with the availability of Kodachrome 16mm narrow film material , she switched to making color films . This is how she made films of her travels to Egypt, and especially to India , where she filmed the life of British high society and tourist activities including tiger hunts and elephant rides, and thus incidentally created documents of a colonial world that was then already falling.

In her eyes she had the picturesque, but also the everyday, she avoided the depiction of poverty and misery. Sometimes she didn't understand what she was seeing either, as the subtitle of an Indian film once appeared: “A picturesque alley of houses with barred windows”. In fact, it shows the brothel district with the prostitutes offering themselves behind the bars. On Chowpatty Beach in Mumbai , she filmed over a crowd, apparently without realizing that it was a political gathering of the then growing Indian independence movement. The resulting films were not only shown to friends, but also to the public at charity events.

She did not only film while traveling, but occasionally also in the neighborhood. This is how the first color film recording of the young Princess Elisabeth was made . In 1937 she filmed the inspection tour of the new King George VI. in the Royal Navy .

At the beginning of the Second World War , she entered the Women's Voluntary Service . She continued to organize film screenings, even in France as part of troop support events. From her recordings, which were made during the German air raids on London (" The Blitz "), she put together a film "Britain at War", which was shown from 1942 and completed in 1946. She took some risks with these recordings. She compared herself to a soldier who, instead of using a machine gun, dares to venture into the fire with a camera. Accordingly, she also spoke of the film material as her "ammunition". Her constant concern was that the paint, which was difficult to obtain during the war, could become scarce. When the family's London townhouse was badly damaged by the air raids, she moved to the luxury hotel "The Dorchester" in London's Hyde Park , where she felt so comfortable that she stayed there for over 30 years and was known as the "Duchess of Dorchester" got known.

She continued to document her travels on film until the early 1960s. In 1988 she died at the age of 91.

Your films were the subject of the first part of "The Thirties in Color", a four-part BBC television series with color film recordings from the 1930s.

Most of your cinematic estate is kept in the Imperial War Museum .

Fonts

  • To the land of the pharaohs. The story of the film. Athenaeum Press, London [approx. 1940]
  • England at War. Chiswick Press, London 1942 (with black and white photographs, in connection with the film of the same name)
  • Britain at War: Narrative of a Film Record. MaxLove Publishing, London, 1948. 2nd, expanded edition.
  • Impressions of liberated Belgium after VE day 1945. Self-published, London 1945

literature

  • Witness: Women War Artists. An exhibition at Imperial War Museum North 7 February 2009 - 19 April 2009 , p. 16 PDF

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The World of the Thirties in Color, Part 1, 48:50
  2. ↑ Sir Sigmund Neumann, 1st Bt. On thepeerage.com , accessed on August 19, 2015.
  3. ↑ "A quaint street of houses with barred windows"
  4. ↑ The World of the Thirties in Color, Part 1, 9:20
  5. ↑ The World of the Thirties in Color Part 1, 6: 40-7: 10
  6. ↑ Director: Christina Lowry, GB 2008; German premiere: “The world of the thirties in color (1/4)”, Phoenix , April 18, 2010, 00:00
personal data
SURNAME Newman, Rosie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Newman, Rosie Violet Nina Millicent (full name); Neumann, Rosie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British amateur filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England , UK
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1988