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Title: ROSE OF THE ORIENT, the

Reference number: 0624

Date: 1935

Sponsor: SCWS

Production company: Publicity Films Ltd.

Sound: sound

Original format: 16mm

Colour: bw

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 47 mins

Description: The history of tea cultivation and the East Indian Tea Company.

Similarities with the later EASTERN ROSE ref. 0614, using some of the same footage.

For further information see "The British Co-operative Movement Film Catalogue" compiled and edited by Alan Burton 1997.

Credits: sd. rec. RCA Photophone System
comm. s. Henry Ainley

Shotlist: Credits (.15); Shots of dramatised after-dinner chat with uncle on his favourite subject of tea and how in 1654 the Great East India Tea Company popularised the drink (1.12); Shots of the officials of the East India Tea Company in 1654 suggesting ways and means of increasing tea consumption, eg. if Queen Catherine were to drink tea, others would follow her fashionable example (3.55); Shots of the Queen attended by three ladies-in-waiting complaining of a headache (5.15); A casket of tea is presented by the East India Tea Company and one sip miraculously cures the headache (6.14); 1760 ... Among the many who had taken to this "new beverage" was the great Doctor Johnston ... (6.28); Scene with Doctor Johnston in company drinking vast quantities of tea (8.10); In the sixties, a terrible fungal disease attacked the coffee plantations of Ceylon. In that Victorian era many a young man set sail from Britain to work on the tea estates and help meet the evergrowing demand (8.33); Shot in sitting room of young girl being persuaded to sing to her sweetheart on his last day in England. Maid brings in tea and girl sings (11.02); Shot of map and general view of Ceylon (12.12) Shot of snake-charmer with cobra (12.56); Man blows "muster horn" to signal start of day for estate workers (13.53); Workers assemble at mustering places where they divide up into parties each with its own task - picking tea, cultivation of bushes, etc (15.39); Shots of men working around tea trees which provide seeds for bushes (16.48); Shots of seed being collected, sorted and stored (18.37); SCWS nursery where seeds are sown and transplanted to tea field (20.40); Shots of tree becoming bush (21.47); Several shots dealing with welfare of the estate workers. Society Hospital, school, etc (22.55); Shots of tea being picked, examined and weighed (24.58); Tea is transported by an aerial ropeway (cable-car arrangement) to factory (25.55); Shots of workers recreation periods. Shots dancing (27.17); Shot of Society's Westhall Factory 1914, exterior and interior, fresh leaves made into tea, graded, tasted and packed (34.06); Tea transported by ropeway to railway sidings and taken to coast (36.18); Tea loaded onto ships at Colombo (39.47); Tea arrives in London, is blended separately for each region of the country (due to different types of water) and re-packed correct cup of tea. They rejoin the men (47.23)