This all colour archive series includes stories such as the exotic life of a circus entertainer in 1950’s Northern Ireland, the speed and excitement of the Ulster Grand Prix in the 1960’s, the incredible Belfast man, who built a steam train in his back garden and a child’s eye view of the Auld Lammas Fair of days gone by. Super 8 Stories also shares the stories of people in the past far from home, this series will include New York, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Canada and the West Indies.

The people's own archive!
Super 8 Stories: A four-part series that presents seventy-five years of life in Northern Ireland, recorded by the people who live here. Each episode has condensed hundreds of hours of home movie footage, all shot by local people, to form a 'people's archive' of life in Northern Ireland across the decades.

Produced by DoubleBand Films for BBC Northern Ireland, Super 8 Stories features previously unseen films of family occasions, sporting events and historical moments, coupled with musical classics from each era, treating viewers to a very different presentation of the past, with those unmistakable flickering images which many will identify with and relate to from their own experiences.

In the last series, Super 8 Stories rediscovered the glamour of life on the road with Fossets Circus in 1959, in a time when children all across Northern Ireland were spellbound by the exotic acts in the days before television.

The extraoridnary tales of the men who worked in the deep sea docks in Belfast in 1961, including the legendary escape from a cargo hold of chimpanze, who wrecked a shop in York Street. The incredible visit of then best batsman in the world, Gary Sobers and the West Indies Cricket team to Limavady in 1968, where Sobers startled local crowds by scoring the last twenty runs of his century with the edge of his bat. The amazing archive of Donaghadee pharmacist Bertie McKnight, who captured beautiful images of life in 1950’s Northern Ireland, including the breathtaking sight of the Canberra in Belfast Lough. And finally the extraordinary story of one Belfast man’s personal railway preservation, as he lovingly restores and builds a railway in his backgarden.
Super 8 Stories is a journey of rediscovery, with unseen colour home movie film and revealing interviews.

If those flickering images spark off memories of your own, share them at Your Place and Mine where people have already been remembering the glory days of punk rock, sunny days in Newcastle, their wartime experiences and working at Harland & Wolff.

Series director Brian Henry Martin says, 'We were overwhelmed by the response to Super 8 Stories. Forget the past in black and white, watch Super 8 Stories and see Northern Ireland how it used to be in unseen colour film and meet extraordinary people with great stories to share.’