The Abingdon Foundation, Park Road, Abingdon, Oxford OX14 1DE 01235 521563 • Edited by Julia Cooke – [email protected] 01235 849123 • Design – [email protected] Abingdon Out of the Past @abingdonschool @abingdonschool @abingdon_school linkedin.com/school/abingdonschool Abingdon Film Unit (AFU) celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Inspired by the renowned documentary film maker Michael Grigsby OA 1955, it was founded by Jeremy Taylor in 2003 and has now made more than 200 films. Under the guidance of professional tutors, the films range from the trivial and amusing to the historic and profound. In 2006 members of the unit spent three weeks in Cambodia making Gravel and Stones about the plight of people disabled by landmines. Grigsby died in 2013 but his influence in the Unit lives on with the annual Spirit of Grigsby and Michael Grigsby Young Filmmaker of the Year awards. All AFU films can be watched on Vimeo. It is 70 years since Michael Grigsby (19362013) made his first film, Ut Proficias. He was 16 when he persuaded the headmaster, James Cobban, to support his plan to make a documentary about a day in the life of an Abingdon boarder. Grigsby kept a meticulous log of the making of the film. It highlights the huge differences in filmmaking in the intervening 70 years – and the similarities: overspend and over run. The budget rose from £10 to £23 and the film wasn’t finished until the day of the premiere. Ut Proficias can be watched on the British Film Institute’s archive site as can Grigsby’s later film, No Tumbled House (1955), which was also filmed at the school. Ut Proficias James Cobban chose the title of Grigsby’s film. The words form part of the motto that appears over the entrance into Big School – Ingredere ut Proficias, enter in order to progress. The same words appeared over the entrance into the old 16th century grammar school and were repeated again in the windows of the Sports Centre in 2008. To anyone who questioned the wisdom of giving the film an obscure Latin title Cobban would say that it hadn’t done the Hollywood film Quo Vadis (1951) any harm. 63 This is the 63rd edition of Abingdon News, which is also celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. For the School this is a numerologically significant number since it was in 1563, on his 63rd birthday, that John Roysse donated £50 to create a new schoolroom that he knew to be 15’ wide and 63’ long and in which he intended 63 free scholars to be educated. The school bell is rung 63 times to mark special occasions and the date 1563 is embedded in the school’s telephone number: 01235 521563. The school bell AFU is 20! Sports Centre windows Entrance into Big School From Grigsby’s log book Cambodia 2006
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