Mysterious opening ceremony from the 1960s

This standard 8 vintage home movie from the 1960s shows an opening ceremony which I’ve been unable to identify although the clues to do so are in the film.

The film is an Ilford Standard 8 which comes in a small plastic push together box.

The film actually has a clue as to the contents because it has written on it some words in faint pencil, but unfortunately I can’t make out what they say, or at least I can’t make out in any sensible way. The bit I can read seems to say, ‘Rest Room’, which is followed by the bit I can’t read.

Opening Ceremony Film

The events in the film are fairly self explanatory. This is obviously a ceremony of some kind and the standard type of ceremony of this sort is when a new building opens. The Plaque on the wall, shown in the second picture below also seems to point to this, but unfortunately I can’t make out the writing due to the poor quality of the conversion to digital.

When I get time I’m going to see if I can get a better image of that frame of the film using a macro lens on my Fuji XT-1 to see if the text can be read. It’s particularly annoying, because I’m pretty sure the date is also written on the plaque (which I think may be 1967) so I could get quite a lot of information from the one image.

There seem to be quite a number of people attending the ceremony – presumably the local people and perhaps people who will be working in the new building if it is a commercial property.

Anyway, whatever the ceremony the film is still interesting from a social history perspective.