A glimpse into Ireland's past as captured by keen amateur film makers who have deposited their collections with RTÉ Archives.
Over the years a number of amateur film collections have been deposited at RTÉ Archives. These films cover a range of subjects often photographed before the arrival of television in Ireland.
Presented here are highlights edited from some of the collections that were shot on 8mm and 16mm film and have now been cleaned, graded and transferred.
The films offer a glimpse into Ireland's past as captured by these keen film makers. Alongside the home movies of holidays and family gatherings are records of social life and the documenting of major local and national events.
Among the events covered here are the production of 'Ryan's Daughter', the departure of Irish soldiers to serve in the Congo and the arrival home of Royal Tan having won the Grand National.
Speaking in 1984 one of the film makers PJ Gilmore summed up why these films are as fascinating to us now as they were for the audiences he showed them to in the 1950s,
"People...might come in if they were the stars themselves. By having them up there on the screen doing whatever they were doing in their shops or in their fields or going to mass or whatever they were doing."
