ACTS OF MEMORY

In 1922, during the opening engagement of the Irish Civil War, the Public Record Office in Dublin was devastated by fire. Centuries of records were destroyed, damaged or scattered. In Acts of Memory, filmmaker Mairéad McClean returns to this loss through historical photographs, archival documents and scenes of actors inhabiting an imagined search room, bringing past and present into an uncertain relation.

Shot on 16mm film, Acts of Memory asks: How do we encounter the past through technologies of the future? The film brings together different ways of recording, preserving and reimagining history, exploring how they shape what we can see, hear, remember and imagine.

Figures from the archive return through gestures, performances and traces. Among them are Herbert Wood, whose guide to the records of the Public Record Office became known as the saddest book in Irish history, and Sybil Kirkpatrick, a researcher whose presence in the historical record is less readily recognised. Their stories prompt questions about what survives, whose lives are documented, and what remains beyond the reach of the archive.

Moving between documents, images, voices and fragments of memory, the film considers not only what has been lost, but what was never recorded, who was doing the recording, and what falls outside the systems of naming and classification through which history is assembled.

Rather than reconstructing a lost past, Acts of Memory explores the uncertain ways in which we approach it. The traces that remain, don’t offer a complete account, but invite us to look, listen and make connections of our own.

The research for this project began during McClean's residency with the Beyond22 Project Team/Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, as part of the Decade of Centenaries program at Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin. You can read more about it here.

The film production was funded by the Arts Council of Ireland /an Chomhairle Ealaíon.

a note of thanks to:

Trinity Long Room Hub Staff

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland Team

The Conservators at The National Archives of Ireland, The Public Records Office Northern Ireland and The UK National Archives.

The actors, Lysann Brade and Alberto Bona and the 16mm cinematographer and hand film processing wizards James Holcombe and Aerpo Films and all those who helped with the making of this film.

Acts of Memory was project funded by the Arts Council of Ireland /an Chomhairle Ealaíon.