De Gooise feestweek te Hilversum

Summary

Reportage about the Gooi Festival Week, held to promote the Gooi area which includes the town of Hilversum.

The reportage shows the celebrations in Hilversum on the occasion of the Gooi Festival Week. Footage of the historical pageant, the ‘national dances’, and a fire-extinguishing demonstration by the fire brigade are blended with shots of the audience, the local authorities, and the board of the Tourism Office, which had initiated the Gooi Festival Week. The aim of the Festival Week was to increase awareness of the Gooi. Not everyone was excited about this; many Christians, for example, feared that the secular entertainment would degrade people’s morals and values, and socialists thought that the workers would be better off spending their hard-earned money on education and training than on alcohol and crude entertainment.