Kuwait in 1975

A friend of mine gave me a video his parents shot back when they first arrived to Kuwait in the mid 70s. The video was shot with Super 8 film which was converted years later to VHS format and then recently digitized. The video contains a lot of different footage of Kuwait but edited down to 13 minutes so it’s not very long. Here is a breakdown of what you’ll see in the video, please note there is no sound:

0:00 Kuwait Towers still under construction. There were rumors circulating that the tower spheres were going to be in gold and when they first started adding the blue tiles people were generally disappointed it wasn’t in gold.

2:25 A drive down Fahad al Salem street

3:16 Naif palace, you can see the execution gallows through the open gate at 3:24

3:28 The old National Assembly

3:30 The Arab Planning Institute, currently where the Liberation Tower stands

3:39 Heading towards the Gulf Road

4:15 American Mission Hospital

5:05 The ice cream guy, probably the only thing that hasn’t changed in Kuwait

5:09 Seef Palace

5:14 The Gulf Road near the Dixons House. Nearly all of those old Kuwaiti houses have now been demolished.

5:48 A gas station on the Gulf Road on the beach side. This was demolished after the failed assassination attempt of Sheikh Jaber Al-Sabah, who was the emir of Kuwait at the time. The car explosion had taken place near the station.

5:53 The British Embassy, the main entrance was on the Gulf Road.

6:45 The Behbahani Compound where Casper & Gambini, Starbucks and Dar al Funoon are currently located.

6:56 Almagsab Gate

7:05 Old secondary school now part of the Kuwait University campus.

7:14 Shanty towns. This is where non-Kuwaitis were staying while their paperwork to become Kuwaitis were being processed. This specific town was located in the north near where Entertainment City is currently.

8:13 Dhow building yard near the Port of Doha

10:00 A drive through Shamiya

10:34 Back to Fahad al Salem Srteet

10:50 The old KNPC building

11:23 Souk Al-Mubarakiya

12:54 The gold souk

The video above was shot by Jo and Jeff de Lange. They were also nice enough to take me through the video frame by frame and explain what I was seeing so I could share it with you. [YouTube]

The post Kuwait in 1975 appeared first on 2:48AM - Everything Kuwait.

Reblog: http://ift.tt/1kKjMN2