Billy Chapman Collection

Repository: Irish Film Archive

Identity Statement

TitleBilly Chapman Collection
Archive ReferenceIE IFA/12
Web Link to this Entryhttps://iar.ie/archive/billy-chapman-collection
Creation Dates1948-1952
Extent Medium34 rolls of silent 16mm film

Context

Creator(s): Billy Chapman

  • Administrative History ↴

    Billy Chapman (1902-1959) was a musician, decorative plasterer and cinema-owner who lived in Strokestown, Co. Roscommon. A Derry native, Chapman worked as a riveter in the shipyards of Belfast before emigrating in 1929 to the US, where he worked as a decorative plasterer. He returned to Ireland after seven years and settled in Strokestown, his mother’s hometown. In 1940, he built the Club Cinema – no small feat, given the shortage of building materials occasioned by the outbreak of the Second World War. A gifted musician, Chapman added filmmaking to his list of accomplishments when, in 1948, he began filming local events for exhibition in his cinema. Chapman’s short films were often helpful in attracting punters to the less promising features. His practice of showing his own films before the feature was not without precedent – the Horgan Brothers in Youghal and Canon Doherty in Donegal exhibited their films of local people and events before the main attraction. After he married in 1952, Billy Chapman put away his camera. The last three reels in the collection were shot by others.
  • Archival History ↴

    Donated by George Reynolds
  • Immediate Source Acquisition ↴

    Donation

Content & Structure

  • Scope & Content: Billy Chapman ↴

    The collection includes scenes from the life of a rural town in the mid-twentieth century, for example weddings, funerals, sports days, horse and agricultural fairs, turf-cutting, tree-felling, potato-spraying, religious processions, FCA parades, the training of the local fire brigade, and a visit by John A. Costello and James Dillon for a political rally in 1949.

  • Appraisal Destruction ↴

    Permanent Retention
  • Arrangement ↴

    The collection includes scenes from the life of a rural town in the mid-twentieth century, for example weddings, funerals, sports days, horse and agricultural fairs, turf-cutting, tree-felling, potato-spraying, religious processions, FCA parades, the training of the local fire brigade, and a visit by John A. Costello and James Dillon for a political rally in 1949.

Conditions of Access & Use

Access Conditions Accessible at the Irish Film Archive by appointment.
Creation Dates1948-1952
Extent Medium34 rolls of silent 16mm film

Allied Materials

There are no Allied Materials

Descriptive Control Area

Archivist NoteManus McManus
Rules/ConventionsISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description. 2nd ed. Ottawa: International Council on Archives, 2000.
Date of Descriptions2010