New Film Found Showing Sir Roger Casement

Sir Roger Casement featured before in an earlier weblog in which we described how the only known extant footage of this controversial Irish freedom fighter was filmed. Casement appeared before the movie camera in April 1915 when he was trying to enlist the Germans’ support in a general rising against England and the raising of an Irish Brigade. We recently found an extended scene from this unique historic footage in a contemporary newsreel.

Advertisement for Hearst International Film Pictorial, New York American, 4 August 1916, the day after Casement was executed

Casement was filmed by Albert K. Dawson, an American cinematographer who was in Berlin at the time. With the assistance of American correspondent Franz Hugo Krebs, Casement was persuaded to pose for a film and photo shoot in the hotel where he was staying. The full story can be read in an article by authors Cooper C. Graham and Ron van Dopperen for the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, that appeared in 2016.

Extended scene

In a compiled newsreel that was uploaded by Periscope Films we recently found a new scene that was taken by Dawson during this film and photo shoot. In these shots Casement can be seen smoking a cigarette while talking to the American reporters. This sequence was originally released in the American theaters in Pathé News, No. 45 on June 3, 1916, two months before Casement was executed by the British because of his involvement in the Easter Rising. (Source: Motography, 17 June 1916, page 1411)

The newsreel compilation from the Periscope Film collection can be viewed here. 

We have uploaded Dawson's film from this collection on our YouTube channel.