Archie Reid

Documenting local places, people and customs

Based in Ballyclare, Archie Reid's films capture various facets of life there and in the surrounding areas. He was part of the bustling Northern Irish amateur filmmaking community that sprang-up in the 1960s - alongside the likes of The Spence Brothers and J.J. Tohill. 

Reid was a prolific filmmaker and this collection pays tribute to the diversity of his work; be it glorious footage of his home town’s May Fair in the 1960s, through to ambitious film shorts, such as Seventh Angel - inspired by the Nuclear Disarmament movement during the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis - or the historial flight-of-fancy, The Jorvik Saga.

Brimming with wit and warmth, his films are often inspired by local novelists, or works of whimsy, not least Sodom and Begorrah, a humourous send-up of stage 'Oirish' - starring artist and political cartoonist of repute, Rowel Friers - and which depicts the adventures of a priest who finds his new parish in the grip of the most blatant depravity.