WATCH: 1916 Easter Rising footage featured in British Pathé online archives
In 2016, archival footage of the 1916 Easter Rising was published online ahead of the commemoration of the Re‐ bellion's centenary.
Ireland's 1916 Easter Rising was com‐ memorated by the British Pathé organi‐ zation when it published archive footage of the events and its aftermath online. In 2014, the British Pathé made its en‐ tire archive, which consists of 3,500 hours of coverage on 85,000 lms, available on YouTube.
At the time of the Rising , Pathé’s silent newsreels were the only source of news as we now know it. Cameras captured the Easter Rising and the events sur‐ rounding it.
The footage in Ireland shows British sol‐ diers receiving tea and food from women on the street as well as the heavy damage to the General Post Offi ce on O’Connell Street and Liberty Hall. Other footage shows the damage to the center of Dublin caused by the ghting during Easter Week.
The War of Independence and the sign‐ ing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on Decem‐ ber 7, 1921, also feature in the newly online footage.
"The nest collection of Irish lmed news"
The company’s newsreels stretch from 1896 to 1976 and the Irish Times report says it has, arguably, the nest collec‐ tion of Irish lmed news events before the advent of television.
Included in their thousands of hours of footage is coverage of the First and Second World Wars, as well as exclusive footage of the Titanic , the Hindenburg disaster, and the Wright Brothers' ight.
The company received a grant from the British government in 2010 that allowed Pathé to digitize its entire archive. British Pathé general manager Alastair White told the Irish Times that they have a priceless treasure on their hands: “What we have is a treasure trove unrivaled in historical and cultural signifi ‐ cance that should never be forgotten." “Uploading the lms to YouTube seemed like the best way to make sure of that.” The British Pathé archival footage can be found on their YouTube page. *Originally published in April 2014 ,up‐ dated in April 2024.