Preserving the Archive and Celebrating the Legacy of Radharc Films

The Radharc Trust Award for Documentary at FRESH 2022
Presented to Liam and Rachel O’Connor from Fís na hÓige Kerry for the film ‘THE JOYS OF JUSTIN’

The Radharc Award at the Fresh International Film Festival is given to an entry that catches the spirit of the Radharc programmes – so we were looking to recognise a film that shines a light on an untold story, that prods at our conscience and that helps us understand the world a little better. This time our jury noticed a film about a particular disability, with strong interview content and dynamic visuals, that showed us how a stability assistance dog is helping a young person to cope in daily life.

More images HERE


THE RADHARC AWARD 2021

Winning Entries

Following the deferment of the 2020 Radharc Awards due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, the Radharc Trust was pleased to proceed with ceremonies for the Radharc Awards on Thursday 21 October 2021. The Awards were presented to winners by Prof Brian MacCraith, Chair of the Future of Media Commission, who acknowledged the unique contribution of Radharc to Irish broadcasting history in his keynote speech and noted the challenge of preserving Irish public service broadcasting programming in a globalised media environment.

Awards were presented in Two Categories:
The Radharc Trophy for Category One, for TV documentary, was awarded to AN BHEARNA BHAOIL, produced by Midas Productions for TG4. Producer Medb Johnstone collected the Award.

The Radharc Trophy for Category Two, for documentary produced for digital distribution, was awarded to ENDLESS SUNSHINE ON A CLOUDY DAY produced by Cluster Fox Films by Tiernan Williams .

Certificates for Commended and Highly Commended productions were also awarded in both Categories.

Gallery of 2021 Finalists HERE

This event was co-sponsored by: The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, RTÉ, TG4, Fís Éireann and Screenscene.

The Radharc Trust cares for and promotes the legacy of the Radharc Television Documentary Series. Active from 1962 to 1996, Radharc was an independent Irish TV production company which made over 425 programmes and shot in 75 countries. Our archives hold several thousand original production materials in Film, Tape, Photographic, Paper and Digital Collections and on-going digitisation projects release upgraded and restored titles through a range of public on-line, archival and broadcaster’s resources. Biennial Radharc Documentary Awards recognise and promote excellence in Irish Documentary making.

Announcement from the Radharc Archive: We hope you will enjoy our new Archive Gallery of featured images from the Radharc Photographic Collection, along with a new Archive Video Gallery where the full versions of all fifteen titles from the 2015 phase of our preservation work can be viewed on-line for the first time. Several of these programmes had not been seen in their original 1960s magazine format for decades and all were reassembled from original 16mm master elements, cleaned and digitised at high resolution. Of special interest will be the additional material, including recovered interview out-takes from ‘Christy Brown’s Left Foot’, reference audio recordings for missing voice tracks, new synopses, notes on the restoration process, and supplementary documents from the Paper Collection that allow the researcher to rebuild an authentic picture of lost segments.