Leaving Church – The Horgan Brothers Collection

As future cinema owners, The Horgan Brothers had the foresight to know any event that attracted enormous crowds was worthy of filming. From 1917, their amateur newsreel The Youghal Gazette was shown in The Horgan Picture Theatre, and people from the locality would come to catch a glimpse of themselves on the big screen. This footage of church goers leaving Sunday mass and walking down the church steps in Youghal, is one of the finest examples from their collection and vividly illustrates the broad strata of society that came to worship.

The Horgan Brothers’ films (1910-1920) are some of the earliest moving images made in Ireland. The brothers were photographers who turned their attention to the moving image, eventually opening a cinema in their home town of Youghal, Co Cork. It was here they screened their newsreel-style films, which they named The Youghal Gazette.

To see more of The Horgan Brothers Collection, click here.

With kind permission from Jim Horgan.