The IFI Irish Film Archive recently unveiled its Irish Independence Film Collection, a series of British Pathé and Topical Budget newsreels covering the events of the Irish Revolutionary period in the 1910s and 1920s. Funded by the Irish government and undertaken in collaboration with the British Film Institute and British Pathé, an expert team led by Kasandra O’Connell facilitated a return to the original nitrate prints of these films so they could be digitised to HD quality and made available to the general public via the IFI Player. A further collaboration with colleagues from the National Museum of Ireland and University College Cork led to the curation and contextualisation of content meaning the newsreels were presented to viewers alongside detailed cataloguing information and historical critique. The quality of the material is striking, as can be seen in this comparison illustrated by Digital Collections Developer Kieran O’Leary, FOCAL’s employee of the year.

More information on the IFI Irish Film Archive can be found in IAMHIST’s ‘A Day at the Archives’ blog.