The first event in 2020 was an excellent talk by Ann Donnelly, Access and Outreach Officer of the Northern Ireland Screen Digital Archive. As well as describing the archive and how it has been put together Ann showed a fascinating selection of short films. The earliest of these was one showing the horse drawn fire engines leaving the Chichester Street fire station in 1897 made in association with the Lumiere Brothers. Other films included incidents from the civil war era in the early 1920’s, a surgical team preparing to operate in the RVH in the ‘30s and young people square dancing in the area outside Pickie Swimming Pool in the 1950’s.
Some of the films were produced to get messages across on behalf of the government, the Tourist Board or industry. These included a film of clips on the major economic activities in Northern Ireland on behalf of the government which showed farming, linen and shipbuilding. There was an advertising film from Shorts Bros. on the Seacat missile and the Skyvan aircraft and, of course, a filmed launch at Harland & Wolff, in this case the Cedric.A film of the Canberra sailing off down a very misty Belfast Lough brought back memories for a number of Rotarians who had sailed on the ship during its career as a cruise liner.
Perhaps the most emotive viewing was of American GIs in Northern Ireland during WW2. Clearly made as a piece of propaganda showing how well the GIs were faring and how they interacted with the locals it had humour as well as a splendid rendition by a tenor of “The Rose of Tralee”.
A vote of thanks was given by Alan Shannon who told Ann that the whole Club had been engaged and animated throughout and he predicted that the result would be a lot of traffic on the archive website.
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