History as Moving Image
A Researcher’s Guide to Archiving Irish Historical Documentary by Eugene Finn.

When the current guest editor of Film Ireland [Ross Whitaker] approached me to do an article on moving image archive research for Irish documentary, I was reminded of the overall lack of awareness of film archive resources I’ve encountered in Ireland. I myself had studied Film Archiving for my MA Degree at the East Anglian Film Archive in 1992 and had gained experience of archive sources while working at the Irish Film Archive, the BFI National Film Archive in London, and the work I’d carried out on documentary over a 20-year period.

My aim here is to illustrate how my work applies to the genre of historical documentary. The simplest way to do this would be to take as an example a hypothetical documentary covering the life and career of political-statesman Éamon De Valera, which spans the entire pre- and post-Free State periods and parallels the history of cinema itself.

Any documentary dealing with De Valera would be divided into these headings, which would form the researcher’s brief:

• De Valera’s childhood and upbringing in Bruree, Co Limerick. Education in Co. Cork and at Blackrock and Rockwell College, Dublin, and early teaching career in Dublin colleges. 

• Participation in the Gaelic Revival and the nationalist movement; involvement in the 1916 Rising and subsequent imprisonment in England; Presidency of Sinn Féin following the 1918 elections; role in the Treaty negotiations in 1921; role in the civil war (1922–23).

• The founding of Fianna Fáil and establishment of the Irish Free State; role in implementing Irish neutrality during the Second World War; role as Taoiseach until 1959.

• Role as President of Ireland from 1959–1973; and death in 1975.

Obviously searches on the key movements and individuals involved in De Valera’s biography would be needed as well as general illustrative footage of these periods in Irish life.

There will be little Irish-owned historical footage from the early 20th Century to the early 1960s in Irish moving image archives as most filming during these periods falls under the domain of British (and American) newsreels and documentaries.

An invaluable source for moving image of early 20th Century Ireland are the British newsreels Pathé Gazette, Gaumont Graphic and Topical Budget, all of which contain items on De Valera, the 1916 Rising and the Civil War. Two other important sources exist from the very early period: the beautiful actuality footage of Dublin and Belfast shot by the Lumière Brothers at the very beginnings of cinema; and the recently-archived British actualities in the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection at the BFI in London which contains extraordinary footage of everyday life in Ireland between 1901 and 1902: street scenes of Dublin, Wexford and Belfast, local dignitaries attending the Cork International Exhibition, scenic routes from Cork to Blarney Castle and more.

The main British newsreels containing items on Ireland from the 1930s to the 1970s are British Paramount News, British Movietone News and Gazette, Gaumont-British News, and Pathé News. American newsreels were produced by Gaumont-British News and The March of Time. Most of these can be sourced on the ITN Source and British Pathé websites. For American material, the Hulton Getty footage archive has a searchable database online. Useful searches on an international spectrum of newsreels can also be found on the BUFVC’s Newsreels Database (which doesn’t supply copies).

Moving image archive of Irish life from the ’50s to the ’60s can be sourced through Gael Linn’s Irish language newsreel series Amharc Éireann – which ran from the 1956 until 1964 – and is available through the Irish Film Archive and RTÉ libraries and archives. These give a significant portrayal, for example, of De Valera’s role as Taoiseach.

As Télefís Éireann was established in 1961, the RTÉ Archive and Library would hold footage of De Valera from this period until his death in 1975. The researcher would also want to consult the archives of BBC, UTV, and the archives of foreign TV broadcasters for coverage of major social and political events in Ireland from the ’50s onwards – many of which can be located on the internet.

Of course, the researcher should also be cognisant of documentaries made about De Valera from the 1930s to the present in Ireland, Britain, Europe and America. So searches should be conducted through the Irish Film Archive; the Irish Military Archives; RTÉ; UTV; the BBC; the BFI National Film Archive in London; UCLA Film and TV Archives in California; the Library of Congress Archives, Washington and the Hulton Getty Film Archives. The Imperial War Museum in London also holds film materials relating to military activities in Ireland in the earlier years of the 20th Century until the Second World War. The NIFTC Digital Archive online is a comprehensive source of information on archive footage relating to Northern Ireland.

Another fertile source for moving image of Ireland is the footage made by amateurs and deposited in archives by collectors. These would most likely be housed in RTÉ and the Irish Film Archive, which holds, for example, a wonderful 16 mm colour film of De Valera’s return to his native Limerick, Trip to Bruree, filmed in 1952.

I‘ll conclude with a note on the most cost effective ways of acquiring and clearing rights on archive footage. I would recommend the Irish Film Archive as the first port of call, because, even if the Archive does not hold what you want, the omniscient and helpful Sunniva O’Flynn and her assistant Karen Wall will be able to point you in the right direction regarding availability, access and rights clearance. RTÉ is excellent on TV coverage and documentaries from the 1960s to the present day, its News Archive being a particularly fruitful source of recent political and cultural history.

Smaller archives in the UK, such as the Archive Film Agency (London), Footage Farm, Huntley Film Archives, Film Images (London) and Film Footage are also relatively cheap sources of research and access (although the quality of the transfers are often not up to the standards of the more established archives) for UK and Ireland-based research, but you may find your budget straining under the weightier costs of the collective archives mentioned above – the Getty Archives, ITN Source, British Pathé and British Movietone – all of which are searchable online. They usually charge research access fees, transfer charges, transport and rights clearances. Costs are determined by considerations of what kind of rights you need: for example, a one-off domestic TV broadcast for a five-year period or an international broadcast for a five-year period and so on. Things become expensive when you require theatrical exhibition or worldwide DVD distribution.

I would strongly recommend Trinity College’s Irish Film & TV Research Online website as a starting point for any research into Irish-related moving image archive. It contains a database comprising almost 40,000 titles and provides information as to where to access prints.