`It was a great privilege for me to have the opportunity to praise and give due recognition to people's past and their working lives," says director Anne O'Leary of her four-part exploration of the Irish folk craft tradition in Hidden Treasures. "I cannot help but admire the resourcefulness and ingenuity and physical energy that people once put into the business of living."
This largely forgotten world is brought to life through the use of evocative and often stunningly beautiful imagery from the film archives of the National Museum, blended with equally striking contemporary footage which captures the surprising extent to which many of these traditions still survive around the country. The film archive was initiated by the late Dr A.T. Lucas, Director of the National Museum up to 1979. Over a period of 20 years, from the early 1950s, Lucas travelled the length and breadth of the country with cameraman Brendan Doyle to record the fast disappearing traditions, crafts and way of life of rural people. They filmed many different strands of Irish folk culture, including the making of straw granaries, bog deal ropes, hen's nests, wicker traps, skin boats and wooden pumps.
In 1992, Loopline Films was invited to restore and archive this material. The impact of the footage they discovered led to the development of the four-part series by director Anne O'Leary and producer Martina Durac.
Together with cinematographers John T. Davis and Garry Keane, O'Leary set out to retrace many of the journeys undertaken by Dr Lucas. She was surprised to find that many of the traditions he had recorded were still intact. "The further I explored, the more I realised that very often what is presumed lost is simply hidden." I saw a currach under sail for the first time neatly coiled in its wooden tray, a field if black oats and a treshing in full swing," says O'Leary.Hidden Treasures blends archive material with contemporary footage of colourful celebrations and festivities which survive to this day, such as Mummers, Biddy Boys, Hallowe'en Guisers and Straw Boys. With a contemporary written and narrated by poet Theo Dorgan, the series emphasises the closeness of previous generations to their environment.