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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The Royal Belfast Academical Institution
Relive your schooldays in this wonderfully nostalgic portrait of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in the 1950s.
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Overview
Filmed over a period of more than six years, this film captures scenes of school life typical of the era, such as pupils sitting exams, or assembly in the common hall. Also shown, however, are images that represent Inst's particular ethos and ambitions to offer its boys a "complete, uniform, and extensive system of education." So we see pupils performing Greek plays and scouting exercises, or taking part in sports, including sailing and rowing and the School's Rugby Cup.
Built, in part, with contributions from Belfast's mercantile class, Inst was officially opened in 1814. It's co-founder, William Drennan stated that the school would aim to "diffuse useful knowledge, particularly among the middling orders of society, as a necessity, not a luxury of life". Drennan was a physician, poet and political radical who was instrumental in the creation of the Society of United Irishmen. He could lay claim to coining the description of Ireland as 'the Emerald Isle'.
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