Celebrating some eccentricities and nuances of Irish life; stories on opera singing dogs, weather forecasting goats, a UFO in Mullinahone and hunting monsters in Connemara are among the wonderful oddities
What do opera singing dogs, weather forecasting goats, the seventh son of a seventh son, a fairy tree, a hunt for monsters in the lakes of Connemara, a UFO in Mullinahone, travelling by steamroller from Longford to Dublin, a pub crawl, stretcher race and magician priest who balances his niece on a sword all have in common? They are all among the oddities captured by RTÉ through the decades which will feature as part of the Weird and Wonderful collection, specially created by RTÉ Archives to mark the UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage on Thursday 27th October.
RTÉ Archives, the largest audiovisual archive collection in Ireland, has decided to mark the day by delving into the vaults to bring audiences a unique ‘Weird and Wonderful’ collection of fifteen videos, which illustrate some eccentricities and nuances of Irish life in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
The Weird and Wonderful collection is presented on RTÉ Archive’s website, where content from the archives is published on a daily basis. So far this year, over 1,000 stories have been made available with the site attracting 1.4 million visits to date in 2016. To keep up with the latest stories from the archives follow @RTEArchives on Facebook and Twitter.
Liam Wylie, Curator at RTÉ Archives said “We really enjoyed putting the Weird and the Wonderful collection together. It is a presentation of some of the more offbeat or bizarre stories of Irish life captured by RTÉ that will make you smile. We also hope it will make you think about the value of preserving audiovisual content for the future.”
Consisting of Ireland’s largest audio visual collection, with over 650,000 thousand hours of moving image and sound recordings together with significant collections of photographs, manuscripts and administrative documents, RTÉ Archives maintains and preserves a unique record of Irish life in the interest of the Irish public.
UNESCO declared October 27 as the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage to raise awareness of the significance of AV documents and to draw attention to the need to safeguard them. Every year, activities are organised by different institutions worldwide around a theme. The theme for 2016 is “It’s Your Story – Don’t Lose It”
Commenting on the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, Bríd Dooley, Head of RTÉ Archives and newly elected President of the international audio visual professional representative organisation FIAT/ IFTA said “The archives abound with stories which clearly connects our audiences everywhere. UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is a great opportunity to showcase the importance of keeping these memories intact for future generations and to shine a light on the fantastic work of the audiovisual archive sector and the continued need for funding to preserve these precious collections.”
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