Northern Ireland Screen's Digital Film Archive is a free public access resource for teachers, students, historians and anyone who has an interest in moving images. Spanning from 1897 to the present day, the films in the Digital Film Archive cover all aspects of life in Northern Ireland and includes everything from dramas to documentaries, newsreels and features, animation to amateur footage.
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Grace Bannister
Reconsider Belfast through the optimistic and pragmatic eyes of Grace Bannister, the city's first female Lord Mayor.
From the collection of:
Overview
Meet the Lord Mayor and her team like Dermot collector of useless information and general dogsbody. Featuring stunning aerial photography along with appearances by Frank Carson, Martin Lynch and Sam McAughtry, this documentary is as much a portrait of Belfast for a U.K. audience as it is of its first citizen. It's also an interesting study of gender as Adeline Semple's belief that the city is slow to accept women as equals is echoed in the everyday sexism embedded in the film.
This is an episode of Counterpoint, Ulster Television's landmark current affairs series, which was also broadcast to a national audience on Channel 4. Series’ editor, Derek Murray describes Counterpoint as addressing a “wide range of social concerns which affect every family in Ulster.” Of the 282 episodes that were broadcast from 1978-1996, only a handful are believed to have survived. This material is Courtesy of the UTV Archive.
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