The Lang Hame

The Lang Hame

Date: 25/03/2020 11:56

Archive footage by Derry filmmaker, Fr Michael Collins, forms part of The Lang Hame, a new programme for BBCNI, produced by Imagine TV. Born in 1936, Fr Collins was ordained in Rome in 1960 and went on to spend fifty years working in the Diocese of Derry. He could be often heard on BBC Radio Ulster’s Thought for the Day programme, contributing over 100 pieces. His passion for capturing parish life on film was mirrored in his love of photography, and his book of archive photographs, Travellers in Time and Eternity was published in 2013.

The Lang Hame finds actor and writer Dan Gordon, visiting the beautiful, haunting locale of some of Ulster’s thousands of graveyards, uncovering stories of war, revolution, industry and culture from an Ulster-Scots perspective - the programme is produced with the support of the Ulster Scots Broadcast Fund.

Each county has its own tales to tell, and with Dan as our guide to these burying grounds, this series explores how broader strands of social history are interwoven with the lives and deaths of ordinary and extraordinary people of Ulster-Scots heritage that are buried here.

The first episode of the series, focusing on Derry, is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer

The full versions of Fr Collins films - Ballinascreen and The Parish Centre - are available to view on the DFA, with a 2019 interview with the filmmaker part of Introducing The Films of Terence McDonald, a documentary on his collaborator and fellow Derry filmmaker.