May Fair event celebrates work of Ballyclare filmmaker

Archie was a prolific and award winning amateur filmmaker, with many short movies made documenting local life around Northern Ireland including short films about his beloved home town of Ballyclare ‘starring’ a cast of friends, neighbours and local school children.

Now a selection of his short movies have been curated by NI Screen and brought to the big screen by the Ballyclare Picture House, a local community cinema that holds monthly screenings of films in the Town Hall.

“The May Fair has a long history in the town and is always the highlight of the year for local people. We wanted to compile a selection of this amazing archive footage made by Archie and his wife Lindy and their friends,” explained Robert Robinson of Ballyclare Picture House.

The event is free and takes place in the Town Hall at 8pm (doors at 7.30pm) on Saturday, May 19 – screening of the short films will be supplemented by interludes of music, poetry and talks with people who worked with Archie during his film making career.

Archie, who lived in Ballyclare his whole life until his death in 2005, got into filmmaking as a student at Queen’s University when he joined the camera club and got the chance to begin making films. He preferred it to photography and kept up his new hobby when he went on to do a postgraduate teaching qualification at Stranmillis College, where he met Lindy – a 17 year-old trainee teacher.

“The camera club there put up a poster saying ‘Wanted: Women’ for films and photoshoots – I went along but I preferred doing the technical jobs rather than posing! I did the sound and back up then the sound was recorded separately and you had to match everything up,” Lindy explained.