Northern Ireland Screen invited four artists to respond to the films within the Digital Film Archive. The Looking Glass Anthology is a collection of beautiful works by a range of musicians and poets that capture what the archives mean to them on a personal level.

Poet Stephen Sexton was drawn to explore what those being filmed in the past may have imagined the future to be and how we, the viewer looking back, see their lives. What did they experience? What monumental historical events did they live through? And what did they think of the camera capturing their image? These are actual people with actual lives, hence, The Actualities.

Stephen reads his poem alongside the archives he selected. The images inspired the words and the words found their match in the images. The result is a beautiful journey back in time that gives new life to the people we see in the archives.

The accompanying soundtrack is an evocative bespoke composition by Ian Livingstone. Ian captures the sounds of the eras we travel through - single notes and random beats come together to create a melody that carries the viewer through the images and words.

Stephen Sexton is the author of a book of poems If All the World and Love Were Young, published by Penguin in August 2019 and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2021, his second book of poems, Cheryl's Destinies, was published. Stephen currently teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry.

Watch the rest of the anthology here