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Still from the unseen Beatles footage showing the Beatles
enjoying fish and chips.
© Apple Films
Ltd
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The Arena Hotel is a ground-breaking online project for The Space, the new digital arts service developed by the Arts Council in partnership with the BBC. For the first time, Arena, the multi-award winning BBC television arts series, is opening up its unique archive in an innovative and entertaining new format to offer audiences the chance to watch exclusive material.
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Still from the unseen Beatles footage showing the Beatles enjoying fish and chips.
© Apple Films Ltd
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In association with Apple Films, Arena
has been granted unique access to some very special unseen footage of the
Beatles during the making of a documentary about their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour and is showing it
exclusively at The Arena Hotel at thespace.org
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Still from the unseen Beatles footage showing the Beatles enjoying fish and chips.
© Apple Films Ltd
|
Arena has cut this unseen footage
to make a new short in which the Beatles take you on a magical coach trip from
the Hotel to a classic British fish and chip shop. Shot en route to Newquay,
the final destination of the Magical
Mystery Tour, the film is available to view exclusively on The Space.
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Still from the unseen Beatles footage showing the Beatles enjoying fish and chips.
© Apple Films Ltd
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The film shows the Beatles relaxed
and sharing fish and chips with their fellow passengers from the Magical Mystery Tour coach in a chippy
in Taunton.
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Still from the unseen Beatles footage showing the Beatles enjoying fish and chips.
© Apple Films Ltd
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Magical Mystery Tour was first broadcast as the centrepiece of the
BBC’s Boxing Day schedule in 1967. It confused and alienated audiences, was
savaged by the critics and, aside from a muted appearance on BBC Two in 1979,
has not been shown since.
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Still from the unseen Beatles footage showing the Beatles enjoying fish and chips.
© Apple Films Ltd
|
From Tuesday 2 October, audiences
can visit The Arena Hotel on The Space (www.thespace.org) to get their
first glimpse of this never before seen footage from the cutting room floor of
the Magical Mystery Tour.
And on Saturday 6 October at
21.45 on BBC Two, Arena: The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour Revisited presents a new documentary which reassesses
the artistic merit and cultural significance of the film before treating
viewers to the digitally remastered full length Magical Mystery Tour – for the first time in 33 years.
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Magical Mystery Tour
© Apple Films
Ltd
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Arena Editor, Anthony Wall says,
“Few people have seen Magical Mystery
Tour in its entirety and the material in the chip shop has never been shown
anywhere. It captures perfectly the fabulous world of The Beatles at this time. They’re
happily sharing a simple meal with the other passengers on the coach as the
astonished residents of Taunton gather outside and at the same time creating an
extraordinarily avant garde film, which of course would soon be broadcast by
the BBC to a dumbstruck nation.”
In a project exclusively for The
Space, Arena is opening up its unique film archive to the public, and making it
available through The Arena Hotel. Guests can browse clips from the
programme’s archive of 600 films, presented in the fully immersive environment
of a virtual hotel.
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Magical Mystery Tour
© Apple Films Ltd
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Anthony Wall continues, “The Arena Hotel is the
perfect place to enjoy clips like this – it’s a philosophically different way
of presenting and experiencing archive. We’re trying to offer a kind of matrix
of material from which guests spin their own narratives. In this case they are
free to make all sorts of unprescribed connections between the Beatles film and
other weird and wonderful characters and phenomena that you can experience in
the hotel.”
Watch the exclusive Beatles footage here
Arena: The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour is on BBC Two,
Saturday 6th October, 21.45 GMT
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Magical Mystery Tour
© Apple Films Ltd
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Arena Hotel
Director: Alex Jones
Arena Series Editor: Anthony Wall
Producer for The Space: Simon Still
The concept of The Arena Hotel is based on an
original idea by Emma Matthews and Anthony Wall.
NB: All images are used here with permission; please do not download or reproduce any of the images without the express permission of the copyright holder.
NB: All images are used here with permission; please do not download or reproduce any of the images without the express permission of the copyright holder.
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