"IT was a time of remarkable innocence," says film maker Louis Marcus of the eight years, from 1956 to 1964, covered in his new archive series, The Years of Change. Using material chosen from the 300 issues of the Gael Linn cinema newsreel, Amharc Eireann, the series provides a fascinating portrait of the cultural, social and economic change of the Lemass years. It was a time when people were thrilled that we seemed to have finally made it as a country and a society, Marcus remembers. "The national inferiority complex was still huge, so when Tim magazine came to tell us we had produced an economic miracle, it was a huge boost."

The original intention was to make a conventional documentary series about the period, using contemporary interviews and commentary along with the archive footage. "But when I discovered the sheer range of the material, it became clear it would be preferable to focus on that."

Some of the contemporary ironies and consequences of the issues raised in the newsreels are pointed up in the commentary written by Marcus, and read by RTE newsreader Eamonn Lawlor. "There were times when we just had to comment, because what they were doing in all innocence sowed the seeds for the social problems of today."

Several sequences depict the squalid and dangerous conditions of Dublin's tenements at the time. "Ironically, the State's initial answer to the housing crisis you see in the series was the building of the Ballymun flats, and now, more than 30 years later, they're deciding to pull them down. Nowadays we're a lot more retrospective and analytical about the consequences of what we do - I'm not saying that makes us any better, because we still ignore the inequalities and social problems around us.

Marcus treats the whole six year period thematically, as a moment, rather than chronologically. "Six areas emerged, which seemed to have a coherence and which conveyed that central theme of a time of change. The first programme has the least amount of change - in it, because it's about the relationship between Church and State. The change there, I think, will be in the perception of the modern audience, because the disappearance of the strongly devotional and public ceremonials of traditional Irish Catholicism will be clear to people today. In the later programmes, we see that, change starting to take place.

While the first programme features events such as the Croagh Patrick pilgrimage and the annual blessing of the Aer Lingus fleet, further episodes depict the beginnings of a new affluence and self confidence, dealing with subjects like changes in urban and rural life, and in the country's relationship with the outside world. Some of the original commentary is retained, and provides - its own perspective on the period. "There are all these jokey references to women, which are quite innocent, but are redolent of the way in which women were regarded as a joke when they dared to enter into areas which were seen as the exclusive domain of men.

"It wash still the age of seniority, and of grey, old men - specifically men - ruling - everything. It's not until later programmes in the series you see women and younger people even beginning to emerge as independent human beings in their own right. It was very much an old man's Ireland."

Looming over everything is the figure of de Valera, officiating as President at all kinds of official functions and events. "Yes, he is seen as the icon of old Ireland. Of course, the truth was a lot more complex - what we think of as Lemass's revolution was initiated by de Valera when he published the first Whitaker report, which it then fell to Lemass to implement.

"I think there is an implication in the series of the beginnings of the decadence which we have today," says Marcus. "It would be ridiculous to suggest all change has been for the good - there has been a collapse of values, which is the downside of the liberal revolution."

There's also a sense at times in the commentary for The Years Of Change of opportunities lost or thrown away - for example in the portrait of Frank Aiken's foreign policy. "I was happy to highlight Aiken, because I believe he was a very under rated man. I think it's unfortunate we did succumb to American influence, rather than developing a truly independent foreign policy".

Having campaigned for more than three decades for the development of an indigenous Irish film industry, and as the current chairperson of the Film Board, it's hardly surprising some of Marcus's most scathing comment in the series is reserved for the ersatz British films which are seen in the newsreels being shot in Dublin in the early 1960s. "There was a division between a tiny Irish film industry, centred mostly around Gael Linn, and a pseudo industry, based in Ardmore, in which no Irish person could get a job."

THE actual footage, beautifully shot in luminous black and white, is in remarkably good condition. "It has become a cliche of actuality footage these days that the material is scratched - sometimes they even scratch it themselves. I wanted to let people see the standard of the photography at the time was wonderful," Marcus says.

While Amharc Eireann was being produced, Louis Marcus himself was also working for Gael Linn's film production department. As an organisation committed to the revival of the Irish language and culture, did Gael Linn bring a specific ideological slant to its reportage? "It was a very vibrant organisation, the only one which espoused indigenous film production. They were very involved in the promotion of industry at the time. I found the Irish language circles when I became involved with them in the early 1960s were much more liberally inclined than the rest of the country. But I don't think Gael Linn ever imposed an ideology on the newsreels."