Ciara Chambers, Head of the School of Film, Music & Theatre, University College Cork and Northern Ireland Screen Board Member, speaks to us about her involvement and collaboration with the Digital Film Archive, which has weaved in and out of her career for over twenty years.

For me the word archive conjures up a magical space that combines past, present and future. I was first bewitched by the archive  when I worked as Digital Film Archive Outreach Officer back in 2002. When I left Northern Ireland Screen, full of regret, to pursue a PhD in 2004, I wish I had known that my connection to the DFA would continue for the next 22 years (and hopefully beyond)! I became utterly engrossed in the collections and astonished at how audiences across the country from primary schools to residential care homes were visibly transformed by engaging with the footage at public screenings. Over the past two decades, I have shared footage from the DFA with many students and colleagues across the world.

Two types of cinema in particular captured my imagination: newsreels and non-professional production. These films were different to anything I’d ever seen before and I’ve dedicated many years to researching what has often been deemed ‘marginalised’ forms of cinema ever since.

Along the way an extraordinary group of filmmakers in Northern Ireland shared their films and their cinematic knowledge with me. As I watched the documentaries, travel films, experimental work, science fiction, drama, comedy and reportage recorded by these creatives, I learned why Northern Ireland was, for many decades, one of the most successful regions in the world in the ‘Ten Best’ Amateur Oscars competition.

Through the DFA’s involvement with the Make Film History project, now many emerging filmmakers are able to access these films and reuse them in their own work to make new art forms that then, in turn, become part of the archive. Seeing students inspired and excited by engaging with the work of their predecessors is a powerful reminder how cinematic influences are passed down through the generations.

Paul McClintock, who introduced me to some of these films, edited this wonderful trailer to showcase the collections I’ve written about in Outsider Cinema: Independent and Amateur Filmmaking in Northern Ireland, 1929-1989.

Watching this reminds me why I fell in love with the Digital Film Archive and why, almost a generation later, it continues to be a companion to me in all of my academic work.