Hugh Odling-Smee, Project Manager at Film Hub NI reflects on his highlights from collaborations with the Digital Film Archive over the past 13 years.

In the 13 years of Film Hub NI’s existence, we’ve seen the Digital Film Archive go from strength to strength, growing from a small department in 2013 managing limited collections to a key arm of Northern Ireland Screen’s work in developing film culture in NI. Throughout that time, the willingness of the DFA to take creative leaps in engaging audiences with film archives has paid great dividends, and we’ve been delighted to partner with the archive and support our members in delivering work which brings to cinema audiences the rich heritage held in the DFA.

There have been many highlights, including a screening film of NI’s strange folk traditions at the Giant's Ring, marrying archive and music in the Marble Arch Caves and showing a fully restored Colm Villa film, Open Asylum, lost since the mid 1980s, to audiences at Foyle and Belfast Film Festivals. The screening of the 1982 World Cup story, Yer Man in Spain, to a packed Odeon cinema will live long in the memory.

A particular highlight was Vox Populi, a curated selection of films from the UTV archive, screened on each floor of the derelict Bank of Ireland building on Royal Avenue, soon to the site of the Belfast Stories centre. This project, supported by our BFI FAN colleagues at Film Hub North, saw themed selections highlighting the stories of Belfast in the 1960s, revealing the pleasures, fears and challenges faced by Belfast citizens in those years. To see those voices in such an iconic building was to hear the city now echo with the city as it once was; a moving experience for all who saw it.

The creativity shown by the DFA in connecting audiences of today with their heritage through film archive adds enormously to the understanding of who we are and how we have reached this point, and we wish all the team continued success as they enter their second quarter century.

Watch Vox Populi 

View more from the project here