The History of Dance Music in NI archive project

09th April 2020 3 Minute Read

Today, 9th April 2020, was supposed to be the day where we were to jointly host an archive film event and panel discussion, ‘The Shapes Between Us' at the Ulster Sports Club in Belfast.

Based around the history of dance music in NI, the idea for the event at Belfast Film Festival came out of discussions with Hub members Second Chance Cinema  about the ongoing interest in the scene, and how it could be captured through archive film.

We had been working on the event with Second Chance Cinema for a few months, and then decided to chat to Belfast-based dance music legend, Phil Kieran, to see if he would like to get involved. Out of these conversations, a bigger creative collaborative project evolved.

While it hasn’t been possible to deliver the event as planned, Film Hub NI are determined to carry on with what we have started - developing an archive film project based around the history and evolution of dance music in Northern Ireland. The finished project will tell the story of how the music impacted on the fabric of a society caught up in conflict, and talk about the DJs, clubs, pubs and punters that formed the scene that changed many lives.

Given the current situation with Covid-19 and the government guidelines in place, we don’t know where or when we are going to be able to hold events, but we’ll let you know as soon as we can.

You can get a taster of what we are trying to achieve on the Belfast Film Festival  by watching this short film here and also enjoy a curated ‘The Shapes Between Us’ playlist from Phil here.

The team will be working in partnership with many film archives in the hunt for material – NI Screen’s Digital Film Archive, PRONI, UTV, BBC, RTE  and more, and we are also looking for personal items from the public - old flyers, photos, and especially video footage of raves/events which took place from around 1988-2003.

If you have any of these that you’d be willing to share with us, please contact us on [email protected]

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