IFI Blog

IFI Explorers is our club for 15 to 18 year olds who want to discover a world of film beyond Hollywood blockbusters. Student Oleg Kuvsincikov came up with the club's name and here he explains why:

I chose IFI Explorers as a name for the IFI teen film offer because the films that are shown in the Irish Film Institute are unusual and different to the ones in other cinemas.

In my opinion, ‘explorers’ creates that sense of discovering something new about films. For example, I watched a film called Shun Li and the Poet (pictured above) with my school in the IFI and I discovered that even though the film had barely any action in it, it was still very interesting because of the plot and the conflict in the film.

I personally feel that the IFI teen film offer will help teenagers explore a world of film and that is why I have chosen the name IFI Explorers to reflect that.

Oleg Kuvsincikov (Age 15)

SPECIAL €3 TICKET OFFER FOR NOVEMBER!

This month we are offering the special price of just €3 a ticket for screenings between 1pm and 6pm to those aged 15 – 18. Don’t forget if you buy a ticket for three films, you get your fourth ticket FREE! Check out this month's films.

Contact Dee Quinlan for more information, or sign up to receive the IFI Explorers newsletter (scroll down page to enter your name and email).

Santa Lingevičiūtė, Artistic Director of the Vilnius International Film Festival, talks about three generations of Lithuanian cinema ahead of the IFI Lithuanian Film Focus (Dec 6th – 8th)

Gytis Lukšas is one of the last of the Mohicans of the so-called ‘golden’ generation of Lithuanian cinema. He is a jack of all trades: director, screenwriter, chairman of the Lithuanian Association of Cinematographers, and member of Culture and Art Council. His films, Autumn of My Childhood (Mano vaikystės ruduo, 1977), Summer Ends in Autumn (Vasara baigiasi rudenį, 1981), and English Waltz (Anglų valsas, 1982), are considered his best and already belong to the Lithuanian classics archive. Lukšas is one of those directors who perceived the cinematic potential of Lithuanian literature therefore most of his films are adaptations. Very often he questions the concept of morality; his films are very intimate and this intimacy forces the spectator to seek connections with one’s biography. Lukšas‘s cinema is a rare example of unity: music supplements the image or acting, or vice versa. His latest film Vortex (Duburys) is an adaptation of a novel written by Romualdas Granauskas, the winner of the Lithuanian National Prize. It is traditional, black-and-white drama where the relationship between people are watched very closely and attentively. As Lukšas himself put it “it is not simply a story of one man’s life, but also of my own generation.”

Šarūnas Bartas is one the most internationally acclaimed Lithuanian film directors, whose career started in the early ‘90s. As most film people of the former Soviet Union, Bartas graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, aka VGIK. During Soviet times VGIK was considered as one of the top film schools. Šarūnas Bartas gained international recognition for his first feature-length film Three Days (1991), which was awarded the prize of the Ecumenical Jury and Special Mention of FIPRESCI in Berlinale in 1992. This festival was a major breakthrough for the director. His following films were also screened in such A-class film festivals as Berlinale, Cannes (Un Certain Regard Section), Rotterdam, Karlovy Vary, Locarno, London etc. Bartas is a true auteur who rejects traditional narrative. All his films are of loose structure, minimalistic, raising philosophical questions. Bartas’ oeuvre is little known and analysed in Lithuania, but he has a lot of fans outside his homeland. In his latest film Eastern Drift the director tries a genre of classic crime film with some deviations: it is a mixture of peculiar existential drama with stylistics of action film and film noir. Bartas uses his trademark – a non-linear montage. The spectator is transferred to the magical world of the film, leaving one’s space of mundane existence.

Kristina Buožytė represents the young generation of Lithuanian filmmakers. She is probalby most hard working and much more mature in terms of filmmaking among her contemporaries. She has made two feature-length films and both achieved wide international recognition. Buožytė already has a distinctive style. She is interested in the confrontation of double-sided reality. Characters of her films are tortured and betrayed by their own thoughts. Kristina Buožytė is like a surgeon who dissects human character and consciousness with the camera. The subject of examination of inner world is supplemented with subtle feminist nuances. Her first film The Collectress(Kolekcionierė, 2008) was the antithesis of poetic realism, so popular in Lithuanian cinema. Her latest film Vanishing Waves (Aurora) is called a fantastic-psychological-erotic techno-thriller. One can recognise references to Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky and David Lynch but without feeling plagiaristic. Buožytė professionally uses a method of appropriation so popular in contemporary art.

Santa Lingevičiūtė

The IFI Lithuanian Film Focus runs at the IFI from December 6th to 8th. Director Kristina Buožytė will attend the screening of Vanishing Waves on December 6th and take part in a Q&A.

In The Wild Angels (1966), Roger Corman’s brash precursor to Easy Rider, Bruce Dern plays a character called Loser, a rebellious biker in a gang of swastika sporting Hells Angels. He’s dead inside the first 30 minutes of the film, a victim of The Man, of course. When Loser’s funeral becomes an anarchic happening inside a church, his corpse is dragged out of its coffin and passed around the party like a leather jacketed rag doll, fags and booze put in its mouth. It is some credit to Dern that he can command a screen he shares with Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra while playing dead meat.

(The Driver)

Much of the press that has greeted Dern’s great performance in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska has focussed on how underrated he has been as an actor, and it’s true that the only significant recognition he has had prior to the Best Actor award at Cannes this year, a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Coming Home in 1979, seems meagre reward for a career as enduring and distinctive as his. It’s likely this has something to do with the roles that he’s most famous for, characters characterised as “wackos and sickos” by David Letterman in an interview, more poetically described by Dern himself as guys who “live just beyond where the buses run”, though neither description does justice to the variety of his roles he has taken. He has been cowboys, cops and criminals, soldiers and swindlers, straight men and fall guys. Dern appeared in Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), though it was in TV and with Roger Corman’s low budget gems where he really cut his chops, emerging from the Corman stable alongside the likes of Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson into a cynical 1970s Hollywood and a generation of filmmakers who were far from happy with the status quo. He worked with Nicholson onDrive, He Said (1971) andThe King of Marvin Gardens(1972), and is particularly brilliant as the bunco artist failing to convince his brother to come in on a dodgy deal in the later of these two BBS productions. Silent Running (1972) became a platform for cult hero worship rather than further leading roles, and he became defined as a character actor, playing opposite the genuine movie stars of the period; Nicholson, Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby (1974), Ryan O’Neal in The Driver(1978). Coming Home and the Oscar nomination were expected to be another stepping stone to bigger roles, and while these never materialised, he never stopped working, and by the 1990s, a younger generation of filmmakers were casting him with due reverence. His performance in James Foley’s underrated Jim Thompson adaptation After Dark, My Sweet (1990) is pitch perfect, sleazy and outsmarted, a character less clever than he thinks he is; playing an alcoholic vet willing to give serial killer Aileen Wuornos (as portrayed by Charlize Theron) the time of day in Patty Jenkins’ Monster (2003), he emerges from the film as its one unambiguously sympathetic character; and he’s along for the ride in Quentin Tarantino’s slavery romp Django Unchained (2012).

(The King of Marvin Gardens)

Tarantino recently referred to Dern as a “national treasure”, and his appearance in two of the year’s key releases, as well as all the seasonal awards buzz around Nebraska, give that claim credibility. Notoriously, Dern was the only actor to have killed John Wayne on screen, shooting Wayne in the back in The Cowboys (1972). After that film, Dern received death threats. It seems that enough time has passed and now Hollywood can forgive him for messing with The Duke.

(Nebraska)

Michael Hayden

IFI Head of Programming

A focus on Bruce Dern's career runs at the IFI from December 14th to 22nd. His latest film,Nebraska(directed by Alexander Payne) is currently showing.

Sex in the Archives
Films with erotic content are as old as the medium itself, not long after the Lumière Brothers’ first public screening of moving images in December 1895, French filmmaker Eugene Pirou produced Le Coucher de la mariee (1896) in which Louise Willy performed the first strip tease on screen. Even the well-respected Georges Méliès was in on the act, being one of the first filmmakers to present nudity on screen in Après le bal (1897) which he advertised in his film catalogue as being ideal for bachelor parties (Robinson, 1993). The silent era of film was a time of great experimentation and discovery for viewer and creator alike and the success of these early risqué films encouraged the creation, in parallel with the mainstream movie business, of a lesser known, but almost as prolific industry producing erotic one-reel films for private consumption.

Le Coucher de la mariee

Having discovered a lucrative market for this suggestive material, by the mid-noughties directors in France, Germany and the United States had progressed to making one-reel films that included live sex acts with prostitutes, which were shown at bachelor parties and in brothels. The earliest surviving examples of these explicit films are Argentina’s El Sartorio (1907) Germany’s Am Abend (1910) and the American stag movie A Free Ride (1915). These one-reels were often bought by wealthy private collectors, who in turn commissioned more erotic movies and so fuelled a secret industry. Collections of this nature can be found in most affluent countries with a tradition of filmmaking and surprisingly some of the largest collections exist in predominantly Roman Catholic nations such as Mexico, France, Spain and Austria (Swanson, 2005).

Après le bal

Amateur Erotica

The IFI Irish Film Archive collections, however, are not renowned for their scandalous content and unlike many other national film archives we have no home-made or semi-professional erotica lurking in our vaults. Of our amateur collections the most provocative material we hold is from the collection of Lord Desmond Leslie. Lord Leslie, whose family estate is at Glaslough, County Monaghan, was a novelist, filmmaker, composer, Spitfire pilot and spiritualist (Daily Telegraph, 2001). Leslie was known as a bit of a philanderer and his love of women certainly translates into his filmmaking activities. One his films, Sally, features a kittenish young lady whom Lord Leslie met on a skiing holiday in 1955. He films her in various stages of playful undress while she strikes cheesecake glamour poses and the sequence finishes with her wearing nothing but a see through nightdress. The film while certainly suggestive could hardly be described as more than mildly erotic.

Festivals

In the main the only time we encounter objections regarding the sexual content of films in our collection is when they are exhibited in foreign territories. The Archive sends Irish films to venues all around the world and we have to be mindful of the mores and restrictions in each country. In 2004, a significant cultural festival called ‘China Ireland’ proved very difficult to programme with China’s strict censorship laws precluding almost every modern Irish film from being shown. Things were taken to the extreme when a festival print of When Brendan Met Trudy was unceremoniously relieved of its sex scenes in Kuala Lumpar. The projectionist physically cut them out of the film and they had to be painstakingly re-inserted by Archive staff when the print returned from its travels. Occurrences such as these are uncommon, with little of the material in our collections giving cause for moral outrage, however our collection does contain two films that on their release failed to receive certificates from the Film Censor of the day.

She Didn’t Say No

In 2001 the Irish Film Archive acquired a print of She Didn’t Say No (1958) thanks to research of American Academic Ann Butler. Based on Fermoy-born Una Troy's novel, We Are Seven, the film depicts the lives of the Monaghan family, six children and their unmarried mother Bridget, in the town of Doon, County Waterford. The children's various fathers are local men - who attempt to find a way to rid the town of their embarrassment.

Although She Didn't Say No was scheduled to be produced in Ireland, permission was refused just weeks before shooting was due to begin and production was moved to Cornwall and Elstree Studios in the UK. According to Ann Butler, who under took extensive research into the making of the film while researching a biography about Troy, the film is disconcertingly based on a true story. In reality Moll McCarthy from County Tipperary was denounced by the local parish priest for fathering children by a variety of men and accused in court of being an immoral mother. Although she kept her children, her home was burned to the ground, leaving her fighting for compensation for many years. She was murdered in 1940 allegedly by Harry Gleeson, who was believed to be the father of her final child. The case caused great controversy at the time, with many believing that Gleeson, who was eventually hanged, had been wrongly accused.

The furore that occurred when the film received its first outing at the 1958 Brussels World Film Festival resulted in headlines denouncing the film as immoral and a slur against the Irish. The Irish Department of External Affairs called for it to be banned and due to this media and government outrage the film was never submitted to the Irish censor. The unconventional Monaghan family circumstances aside, the film itself is an enjoyable piece of whimsy and one wonders if the strength of feeling that prevented it being made or released in Ireland would have been so strong if it had not been based on such a controversial true case.

Lee Dunne
Several of the more controversial films in the Archive collections are adaptations of works by the Dublin author Lee Dunne, who has been described as ‘the most banned author in Ireland’ and deposited in the Archive by American/Irish film collector, Paul Balbirnie.

Lee Dunne

I Can’t I Can’t..., or Wedding Night as it was called in the USA, is a curious drama that is very much of its time (it screens at the IFI on January 22nd). It features popular British stars of the day Denis Waterman and Tessa Wyatt as a newly married Catholic couple unable to consummate their marriage due to the young wife’s fear of sex, which is a result of her mother dying in child birth on her own wedding day. The inclusion of topics that were generally off limits to Irish audiences, such as birth control, miscarriage and the sexual obligations of women within marriage, resulted in this film not being screened in Ireland after the year of its release until 2011, when the IFI Irish Film Archive accepted a print from Paul Balbirnie and screened the film as part of the IFI’s annual Open Day programme.

I Can't I Can't...

Paddy, Lee Dunne’s film adaptation of his controversial book Goodbye to the Hill was banned by the Irish censor due to its sexual frankness. As with I Can’t I Can’t... a copy of the film was found in America by film collector Paul Balbirnie and it was added to the IFI Irish Film Archive collection. The risqué story depicts Abbey actor Des Cave as a sort of ‘Irish Alfie’ who spends most of his time seducing a succession of women around Dublin. No-strings sexual exploits including three-in-a-bed antics, whips and paid afternoon romps with Maureen Toal are the order of the day. Its carefree depiction of sex and on-screen nudity resulted in Paddy being refused a screening certificate when it was submitted to the Censor in 1970.

Paddy

On acquiring copies of these films the Archive submitted them to the current Censor John Kelleher in order to allow them to be include in the Archive’s programme of screenings at the IFI. In 2006, Paddy was able to receive its Irish premiere when the Irish Film Censor’s office issued the film with a 12A rating, while commenting that ‘by today’s standards it is charmingly old–fashioned’ and that ‘it was banned in a different era, a very different time’ (Sunday Independent). She Didn’t Say No was presented with a PG rating in 2003 allowing it to be legitimately screened for the first time in four decades - surely a sign of changing Irish attitudes to sex on film.

Kasandra O’Connell

Head of the IFI Irish Film Archive

Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll is a three-month season dedicated to examining how cinema has taken on sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. January focuses on sex on film.

I Can't I Can't... will show at the IFI at 18.30 on January 22nd as part of From the Vaults, our monthly screenings from the IFI Irish Film Archive.

This article was originally published in Film Ireland.

Bibliography and further reading/viewing

Georges Méliès: Father of Film Fantasy - David Robinson (London: BFI/MOMI, 1993)

Good Old Naughty Days - Polisson et Galipettes - DVD

Home Viewing: Pornography and Amateur Film Collections, A Case Study Dwight Swanson,

The Moving Image - Volume 5, Number 2, University of Minnesota Press - 2005

Pornography - The Secret History of Civilisation - Marilyn Milgrom, Channel 4 Press, 2001

Leslie Obituary - Daily Telegraph -22/11/2001

Paddy Rides Again and Again and Again - Sunday Independent - 13/8/2006

Material relating to the She Didn’t Say No outcry can be found in the paper collection of the IFI Irish Film Archive, the originals are in the National Archives and National Library

Thanks to Ann Butler for her help in finding She Didn’t Say No and uncovering its fascinating history

The Rolling Stones’ fame (some would say notoriety) and enduring popularity for 50+ years is inextricably linked, not just to releasing records and live performance but to their appearances on television and film. Just like the Beatles, the Stones capitalised on burgeoning opportunities of TV exposure in the UK and the US and honed their image and stage personae, not just in front of live audiences but within the context of television studios.

The Rolling Stones on ABC in 1964 (by Terry O'Neill)

They also rapidly saw the potential of film to give them even greater exposure, although their more outlaw, maverick identity pushed them towards documentary and art movie, rather than the musical entertainment vehicles initially developed by, for example, the Beatles. This means that the story of the Stones on celluloid is fascinating, idiosyncratic and unsurprisingly, often controversial.

Gimme Shelter (1970)

As a huge admirer of the band and intrigued by their forays into both small and large screen, I want to trace that history to explore the stories behind the legendary appearances on things like The Ed Sullivan Show and the quirky and often shocking revelations given in films like Godard’sSympathy for the Devil and the Mayles Brothers' Gimme Shelter. Thus, my talk whilst working through a chronological filmography, also describes the sometimes extraordinary circumstances of the different conditions that films got made (partly based on research and partly on conversations I have had with some of the people involved) and also hopefully reveals how the Stones were changed by how they were depicted on screen.

Sympathy for the Devil (1968)

Nevertheless, the talk is both an exploration and a homage, with a plethora of clips and images that reaffirms just how great 'the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World' can truly be.

Adrian Wootton

Chief Executive

Film London and the British Film Commission

The Afternoon Talk, The Rolling Stones on Screen 1963 - 2012, will take place on Tuesday, March 4th at 16.00. Tickets €5 (on sale now).

Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy for the Devil will screen directly after the Talk, at 18.30, as part of the IFI's Rock 'n' Roll season in March. Tickets are on sale now.

"Suddenly something clicks, everything vanishes and a train appears on the screen. It speeds straight at you—watch out!" The perceptual experience of train travel offered several parallels to the cinema experience, and both will be discussed as part of this month's Experimental Film Club selection.

In a recent exchange between experimental filmmakers Rouzbeh Rashidi and Maximilian LeCain, Le Cain outlined the degree to which he now feels out of sync with a 21st century moving image culture. Le Cain continued to be engaged instead with what he describes as a “very 19th century sense” of image culture; of the train approaching the station and the original sensation of “cinema as miracle”. Le Cain is referencing here the Lumiere’s film Train Arriving at La Ciotat one of the most well known, and frequently revisited scenes in cinema history. Many point to this as the key formative moment for the cinema, what Tom Gunning refers to as its ‘primal myth’, alluding not just to the film itself but to the frequently-cited image described in relation to early audiences and their extreme reactions to the film. This image of audience members who became so excited by the image of this approaching train that they either hid under their chairs or ran screaming from the room has by now become all too familiar. It provides us with a suitable distance for our more removed relationship to the screen, to the moving-image, and to the naiveté of those audiences. Re-watching this film now we are unlikely to experience these same hysterical reactions, less likely to confuse an onscreen reality with our own everyday perpetual reality. This distance between our current relationship with the screen, and with cinema and the moving image, and the image of those first audiences experiencing a mechanised moving-image for the first time is striking, but, as is too often the case, there may be more to it than we think.

Gunning outlines that scene as the first of many myths that would spring up around the cinema throughout its history. As he acknowledges it is a scene that may never have actually even taken place, at least not in the manner it is typically described. Early accounts are hard to verify and the film is not believed to have appeared among the Lumiere’s very first screenings, Workers Leaving The Factory is instead the film more typically cited as the first. As Gunning acknowledges however this has done little to reduce the power or the longevity of this mythic image, an image that gets to the heart of many of cinema’s potentials and possibilities. In a famous essay entitled The Kingdom of Shadows Maxim Gorky offered his own impressions of the scene:

"Suddenly something clicks, everything vanishes and a train appears on the screen. It speeds straight at you—watch out! It seems as though it will plunge into the darkness in which you sit, turning you into a ripped sack full of lacerated flesh and splintered bones, and crushing into dust and into broken fragments this hall and this building, so full of women, wine, music and vice."

Gorky’s quote captures a lot of the early anxieties that existed in relation to the cinema. Often considered a den of iniquity the cinema was initially considered only to appeal to the basest of instincts, it blurred class distinctions, it catered to an unedecated and unrefined crowd and its darkened rooms seemed to invite and suggest all kinds of illicit behaviour. The cinema was dangerous, it suggested a real and considerable threat to civil society and to the psyches of those that experienced it. Early accounts of the cinema’s impact were equal in their hysteria to those that sprung up around the Lumiere’s Arrival film, describing a profound and disruptive impact these experiences were likely to have on an impressionable, corruptible populace. In spite of the questionable veracity of these accounts the distance between our current relationship with the screen and the experiences of early audiences would seem all too clear. In these early reports the cinema appeared ‘suddenly’ at the turn of the 20th Century as a potentially revolutionary force, an untameable machine and for some time to come this would remain as both the promise and the threat of cinema.

Terence Davies’ The House of Mirth

For the cinema to thrive this perceived threat and potential would have to be reduced, diminished, domesticated. For its more mainstream iterations, some of these rougher edges, and for some much of its potential, would be reduced and managed. This cinema experience began to strive for invisibility, attempting to create a closed, secure world which its audiences could inhabit safely. Any techniques that disrupted this immersive illusion, that reminded audiences that they were watching a film were reduced, made ‘invisible’, in favour of a narrative form which audiences could lose themselves in for a set period of time. This was a cinematic impression of reality that carefully mirrored our own perceptions of reality and with these changes in place the cinema could become a more pervasive force. It became inescapable and it would help shape how the twentieth century was experienced. This was of course however only one cinema, only one potential direction taken and an avant-garde also emerged as a possible corrective to this more general tendency and a reminder of some of cinema’s still uninhabited possibilities.

Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive

The Lumieres had succinctly grasped many of the key potentialites of the moving-image at the moment when they placed their camera to the right of an approaching train in the small French town of La Ciotat. Their framing of this machine captured the breath of cinema’s depth, and exploited a variety of exciting possibilities for foreground/background juxtaposition. Audiences immediately recognised themselves in the passengers they saw on the platform and alighting from the train. More than this however the cinema in its looking at a train had found a way, at this early stage, to look at itself. The train had become the perfect on screen stand-in for the cinema and its processes, mechanical and otherwise, making visible what was often felt as an invisible presence. The train could now serve as a reflexive device for the cinema, a means for reflective self-examination. The cinema then, and throughout its varied histories, would return to this scene repeatedly.

The perceptual experience of train travel in the 19th century offered several parallels to the cinema experience, an all too similar uncanny combining of movement and stillness that mirrored the mechanics of film. A steady rhythmic flickering of objects passing too close to a window that stood in for the flicker of the screen, especially in those early days. An invisible turning of cogs and wheels that mirrored the cinema’s own, rarely visible, cogs and wheels and the views from a train, which upon entering a tunnel for example, could suddenly shift from window to mirror, providing another essential analogy for on the one hand cinema’s immersive/realist capacity and the reflexive/reflective functions favoured by an emergent avant-garde.

Cinema history should never be conceived of as a straight line, it should instead be thought of a plurality and it is full of divergent paths and roads not taken, its progress was never predetermined. All of its histories sit on top of each other and intersect in unexpected and surprising ways, and the cinema’s forgotten pathways are frequently rediscovered and unearthed. The train provided the cinema with a subject and a means through which it could explore some of these divergent possibilities and the films included in this programme present a number of potentialities in this regard. Stan Brakhage’s Wonder Ring, a film full of reflective surfaces which subtly warp and alter our perception, was also an important document of impending obsolescence, recording a path through the city by a Third Avenue elevated train that was soon to be destroyed. Tscherkassky’s ‘found-footage’ film L’Arivee returns us directly to the Lumiere’s origin point, only here everything is visible, the scratches, pops and stabs of celluloid, even the ‘track’ along the side of the celluloid strip, an aspect of the film machine designed to only ever be heard and not seen. Eventually, after various manufactured collisions, the film jumps to a close-up and suddenly from the film (the medium) and the train (the machine) emerges Catherine Deneuve (‘the star’).

Henri Chommette’s Jeux des Reflets et de la Vitesse (Games of Reflection and of Speed) also plays with reflective surfaces and superimposition, only here we are placed in the subjective position of the train, just as we were in the early ‘phantom ride’ films, we no longer watch the train we are the train, we internalise its processes. Chomette described it as a ‘pure cinema’, not images for images sake and a variety of techniques and operations are on display here, double exposure, negative printing, accelerated speeds, resulting in a ‘cinema of sensation’, freed from any of the bounds of representation.

Ken Jacobs takes us on a similar journey working with a 1906 film and using an optical printer and split screen processes to disrupt and undermine any normative sense of space and time we might still retain. Donal O'Ceilleachair’s ‘single-frame’ film returns us to Oscar Fischinger’s ‘city symphony’ films collapsing a journey from Istanbul to Berlin, fourteen days, down to three breath-taking minutes. Finally Pip Chodorov with Faux Movements creates a sense of motion, of moving through space through what are often unexpected means, yet another ‘phantom ride’.

Henri Chomette Jeux des Reflets et de la Vitesse

This programme of films is the third to consider the train, others included James Benning’s farewell to the filmic medium RR and Sarah Turner’s attempt to update the train film for the digital age Perestroika. As Maximilian Le Cain’s comments acknowledge the train seemed to tie the cinema to a set of concerns inherited from the 19th Century. The degree to which these concerns can remain central to the moving-image culture of the twentieth century remains to be seen. There are also several other obsolescences on display here, most visibly that of the medium itself. The correlations between train and film outlined in these films and elsewhere will not necessarily continue into an age dominated by the digital image. In Tom Gunning’s essay on that early Lumiere screening of a train’s Arrival he reminds that early audiences were likely far more aware of what they were experiencing than we care to admit. These audiences were not astounded and astonished by the train that was apparently about to burst through the wall and tear them asunder, in fact it was something far more remarkable. These early audiences remained fully aware that what they were watching was ‘cinema’, early screenings often began with a still projected photographic image, an image which slowly burst into life, introducing moving-image, movement and animation, were there had previously only been stasis. It was all the possibilities that this image/these images contained that filled these audiences with awe and wonder, as hard as it may be for us to now grasp this was in and of itself enough and it is this distance that we might now sharpen ourselves to in comparing ourselves to those early audiences, to think otherwise would present us as the only naïve participants within this exchange.

Daniel Fitzpatrick

Experimental Film Club

The Train, The Cinema is this month's presentation of the IFI & Experimental Film Club, and will screen on Wednesday, March 19th at 18.30. Tickets now on sale - BOOK NOW.

Jury Critic Brogen Hayes on why three young actresses stood out in We Are The Best!

The journey from child to teenager is a path that rarely runs smooth; as we change, our relationships with friends, family and the world around us changes too. The journey is often observed in cinema, but rarely with such sincerity and warmth than in Lukas Moodysson’s upcoming film, We Are The Best! (Vi är bäst!) which previews as part of the IFI's Rock' n 'Roll season Saturday 29th March at 18.30 and is released on 18th April.

The film follows three young girls, Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin), who are best friends, in the way that only pre-teen girls can be. The performances of the three lead actresses depend on one another in a truly remarkable way; the chemistry between the three is wonderful and they allow the power to shift between them, leaving room for jealousies, arguments and ultimately, resolutions. The struggle that each of the characters goes through in their family lives is utterly relatable. That said, however, We Are The Best is ultimately an uplifting film about the delirium of childhood and the joy of finding good friends.

In the end, it is the chemistry between the three young actresses that carries the film; it is also the reason that audiences will fall in love with the film and the journey these girls go on. It is hard to imagine the film working as well without the strong ensemble performance at its heart, so when considering the film as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival jury, we finally decided to jointly award Best Actress to Barkhammar, Grosin and LeMoyne.

We Are The Best! is a careful and precise observation of the journey between childhood and adolescence, and the friends who last us a lifetime. Barkhammar, Grosin and LeMoyne are wonderful in their roles, and utterly support one another. In the end, We Are The Best! is charming, warm and a whole lot of fun.

Brogen Hayes, Deputy Editor of Movies.ie and Jury Member of Dublin Film Critic's Circle 2014

Ahead of IFI Spotlight, our annual focus on film and television made in or about Ireland, IFI Librarian Fiona Rigney picks her top 3 new books about filmmaking now available at the Irish Film Archive and Library.

IFI Spotlight is taking place throughout April with key new Irish film releases and culminates in a day of free seminars and panel discussions at the IFI on Saturday, April 12th. If you are a film student, researcher, academic, filmmaker or simply just interested in the industry, the IFI Tiernan MacBride Library is home to the largest collection of film related publications in the country and is open to all.

Here are some of Fiona's recommended reads (and there are plenty more in the library!):

1. How to Write Great Screenplays and Get Them into Production by Linda M James
This book teaches you all you need to know about how to succeed in writing and making your own screenplay. With great tips and practical advice, this is a must-read for any budding screenwriters and filmmakers.

2. Introduction to Film Studies 5th Edition Edited by Jill Nelmes

This is one of the best core textbooks for anyone studying films or for anybody who would just like to gain an insight into the film industry. This completely revised and updated fifth edition guides you through the key issues and concepts in film studies, traces the historical development of film and introduces some of the world’s key national cinemas.

3. The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice, 5th Ed. By Ken Dancyger

This book contains the best training for aspiring directors and editors and gives a detailed look at the principles and practices of editing for both picture and sound.

To have a look at these or any of our books, press clippings collection and film journals; call into the IFI Tiernan MacBride Library (located in the Archive Building, at the back of the main IFI building).

The library has over 3,000 books, over 150 different film journal series and over 5,000 press clippings files. The Paper Archive consists of production notes, scripts, storyboards, correspondence, publicity, ephemera, stills and posters, and includes collections from filmmakers such as Neil Jordan, Jim Sheridan, Donald Taylor Black, Pat Murphy, Lord Killanin and Josie MacAvin. It also holds a vast collection of material from the Irish Film Board and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

For more information on our extensive Paper Collections Archive please check out the website or contact the Librarian/Document Archivist, Fiona Rigney.

Opening hours:

Monday: 2.00pm-5.30pm

Tuesday: 10.30am-1pm and 2pm-5.30pm

Wednesday: 10.30am-1pm and 2pm-5.30pm

Thursday: 2.00pm-5.30pm

Friday: closed

Library Charges:

Students €1.50 per visit; general public €2.00 per visit.

Annual Library Membership:

Students €15.00 per year; general public €20.00 per year

John Michael McDonagh’s film, Calvary, currently showing in the IFI, is garnering rave reviews and enjoying phenomenal success at the Irish box office. Brendan Gleeson’s dedication of his performance to “Ireland’s good priests” [1] has inspired us in the IFI Irish Film Archive’s Tiernan MacBride library to look back on some of the most powerful film depictions of 'good' Irish priests. Here, sourced from material in our clippings and image archives, we count down our top 5 list of films depicting well-intentioned, but humanly flawed Irish priests.

Brendan Gleeson in Calvary. Copyight 2013 Octagon Films

5. LAMB (1985)

At number 5 is Liam Neeson’s role as Brother Sebastian, a young priest who flees the oppressive fear and violence in an Irish clergy-run borstal for London with a bullied, epileptic student. His act of defiance against the Church and his attempt to save the boy’s life ultimately end in tragedy. When reading Bernard McLaverty’s book on which the film was based, Neeson felt, “that’s my part, if I had to kill to get it.” [2]

4. THE BISHOP’S STORY (1994)

Donal McCann portrays a bishop who recounts how, as an idealistic but lonely priest, he fathered a child with a young woman. He confesses his affair to his congregation, hoping his honesty will allow him to remain with them as their pastor and care for his lover and child. When his gambit fails he loses his faith and retreats to the foreign missions. Despite his transgressions he is eventually promoted to the position of bishop saying bitterly, “When they can’t sack you, they promote you.” [3]

3. RYAN’S DAUGHTER (1970)

Trevor Howard plays the formidable, rigidly moral Father Collins, who is priest, social worker, mediator and marriage counsellor to his parishioners. His faith, however, does not preclude his Republican leanings. Alec Guinness, a Roman Catholic, turned down the role because of objections he had to the portrayal of the priest as a “gruff old curmudgeon.” [4] David Lean was later to rate Howard’s performance as his personal favourite in the film. [5]

2. GOING MY WAY (1944)

Barry Fitzgerald was nominated as both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for his role as Father Fitzgibbon, and won for the latter. [6] As Father Fitzgibbon, his traditional beliefs clash with those of the younger Father O’ Malley, played by Bing Crosby. They are reconciled by the film’s end when their church is saved from its financial woes, the parish’s troubled youths have formed a successful choir and Father O’ Malley has re-united Father Fitzgibbon with his 90 year old Irish mother -now that’s what I call a Hollywood ending.

1. STELLA DAYS (2011)

Martin Sheen plays Father Daniel Barry, a parish priest who faces opposition from his fellow clergymen, local political forces and parishioners when he sets up the Stella Cinema in 1956 to raise Church funds. He is a conflicted character who is outwardly caring and committed to the Church, but who struggles internally with his vocation, feels a sense of superiority to his parishioners and resents his rejection for a position in the Vatican. Stella Days was filmed in Borrisokane, where Sheen’s mother was born. [7]

By Eilís Ní Raghallaigh

[1] Scally, D. (2014) ‘Gleeson dedicates film role to Ireland’s ‘good’ priests’ , The Irish Times, 10 February. Available here.

[2] Kennedy, M. (1985) ‘Lambs to the Slaughter’ , The Irish Times, 28 May, pg. 12.

[3] O’Shea, S. (1995) ‘The Bishop’s Story’ , Weekly Variety, 24-30 May

[4] & [5] Phillips, G.D. (1996) Beyond the Epic: The Life and Times of David Lean. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

[6] W, K. (2003) ’75 Years of the Oscars Part One: Going My Way’ , A Sunday Times Special Supplement, 9 February.

[7]Shortall, E. (2010) ‘Movie brings Hollywood Sheen to North Tipperary’ , The Sunday Times, 15 August.

Darragh O’Donoghue has been named winner of the IFI Pete Walsh Critical Writing Award for his review of Rob Epstein’s 2013 film Lovelace.

The Pete Walsh Critical Writing Award is a new annual award inspired by the late, esteemed IFI programmer Pete Walsh. Reflecting Pete’s passion for good writing about film, the award recognises an outstanding piece of critical writing on any one film theatrically screened in Ireland during the previous calendar year.

Chairman of the Judging Panel Tony Tracy, Lecturer in Film Studies at Huston School of Film, NUI Galway said ‘I was struck by the number and quality of entries that struggle with the effect and meaning of a film text. The judges felt that Darragh O’Donoghue’s fine piece on Lovelace (a film widely overlooked in 2013) was the most complete in terms of analysis, writing competency and intelligent reference to other films and we’re delighted to congratulate him as this year’s winner.’

The panel consisted of Tony Tracy (NUI Galway), Kevin Coyne (Irish Film Institute), Gráinne Humphreys (Jameson Dublin International Film Festival) and Professor Neil Sinyard.

You can read Darragh O’Donoghue’s winning entry below, or in the June IFI monthly programme. He also receives a year’s free entry to IFI cinemas.

Rob Epstein's Lovelace

LOVELACE (2013, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman)

As a documentary filmmaker, Rob Epstein has rewritten US historiography by placing sex and sexual identity at its centre, rather than wars, expansionism, race or economic development. Most crucially, he reclaimed homosexual achievement, whether that of publicly visible, heroic males like Harvey Milk and Allen Ginsberg, or the unseen gay personnel in, and viewers of, classic Hollywood, who inserted subversive content in their films, or read reactionary narratives ‘against the grain’.

But if males, even homosexual males in a homophobic society, can be active makers of history, Epstein’s first solo female heroine seems passive – discovered, renamed, abused, pimped, raped, gang-raped, and financially exploited by men. Even at the moment of Linda Lovelace’s greatest cultural triumph – skin flick Deep Throat entering mainstream culture, making her a media sensation – her achievement is a joke, her body, her skills, her name the subjects of sniggering jokes by aging males on TV, such as Johnny Carson and Bob Hope.

Had Linda’s story ended with Deep Throat, or the final escape from her vicious husband (an escape ultimately facilitated by yet more scary middle-aged men), hers would have been a sad, sympathetic, not particularly inspiring narrative. What makes Linda a true Epstein hero(ine) is that she fights back. She names and shames her abusers, and by implication the snickering mainstream ‘intelligentsia’ that for a few moments got off on Deep Throat. And she did this by writing a book, by becoming – like Milk the orator and Ginsberg the poet – an artist. Her fight back is like that of the contributors to The Celluloid Closet : each responds to a bogus, noxious, widely accepted media construct of sexual identity with a resounding NO.

The Ginsberg film Howl was the transitional film between Epstein’s documentary work and Lovelace, his first fully blown feature. Howl was a documentary in that it reproduced audio, visual and textual records; it was fictional in that Epstein (and co-director Jeffrey Friedman) reconstructed those records in live action monologues, dramatic sequences and by the use of animation. James Franco acting as Allen Ginsberg as he recites ‘Howl’ or gives a press interview may be fiction, but is only quantitatively different from, say, Franco reading an old letter on a Ken Burns documentary.

Rob Epstein's Lovelace

Howl’s multi-stranded approach is replaced in Lovelace by a more cohesive fictional illusion. Even archival footage of Linda’s appearance on the Donahue talk show digitally replaces the historical Linda with the actress playing her, Amanda Seyfried. The only other factual intrusion occurs at the end of the film when the usual ‘what happened next’ titles are followed, movingly, by a photograph of the real life Linda.

The film begins with an audio-visual overture – images of camera, film screens and audiences warning us to be aware of the mediated nature of what we are about to see; fragmented images of Linda taking a bath are overlaid with a montage of voices, asking for the ‘real’ Linda Lovelace. The impression is of a woman without her own voice, defined by her body, the subject of others’ discourse, her ‘self’ created by cinema and the media.

Her story is then told in two parts. The first is the traditional zero-to-hero narrative. Linda Boreman is brought up in such a strict Catholic family that her only sexual experience to date resulted in a baby that was tricked away from her, the family moving from New York to Florida to escape the perceived shame. This is alluded to as she jokes hesitantly about fellatio with her best friend Patsy – sex is immediately both the subject of embarrassed humour and a literally scarring trauma; later in the film, one will serve to hide the other. Always led by the seemingly more adventurous Patsy, Linda is discovered go-go dancing at a local ice rink by bar owner/small-time criminal Chuck Traynor, whose opening gambit is to ask the ‘girls’ whether they have ever considered dancing professionally. Wooing her with charm and pot, while trying to hit on Patsy at the same time, he marries Linda and, pressed by debt, asks Linda to star in a porno. Deep Throat, with its iconic fellatio sequences and apparent sense of humour, becomes a huge hit; Linda wears gorgeous frocks to meet Sammy Davis Jr and Hugh Hefner at glitzy parties, and everybody is having innocent fun with the unexpected mainstream success of an essentially innocent blue movie.

‘Six years later’ flashes on the screen, a harrowed Linda seems to be tied to a chair; she is taking a polygraph test. She is about to write an exposé of her experiences, and her publishers want to make sure she is telling the truth. The first story is told again, but this time the gaps created by what had seemed to be conventional elisions between scenes are filled in. Linda’s honeymoon sex is a violent rape; before suggesting Deep Throat, Chuck pimps Linda to out-of-town salesmen; she is forced to film Deep Throat at gun point; he brandishes the gun again when Linda refuses to pleasure a room full of Hollywood executives.

The two most distressing scenes are not, however, those of Chuck’s physical abuse, but dramatise encounters with people who should be supportive but fail to help. The first is an astonishing sequence where Linda seeks refuge from Chuck with her parents. Her mother, the exemplary Catholic who offloaded Linda’s baby, refuses to take her in, telling her she must go back to her husband, and fulfil her vow to forever obey him. She can never divorce, despite Linda telling her mother that Chuck abuses her. Sharon Stone’s icy righteousness disguised as maternal wisdom is the high point in a major performance. (Whether or not the conception of her character is sexist – by contrast with the empathetic and emotionally sustaining father – is another matter).

The second scene also stages an abortive flight, as Linda trips in a long dress running away from Chuck outside their home. A police car drives up. The policemen are dubious when Chuck claims to be the bloodied Linda’s husband, but when one of them recognises her as a porn star, all concern for her evaporates, as if someone who works in that line deserves everything she gets.

Rob Epstein's Lovelace

It would be misleading to imply that the first half of the film is the breezy Official Story of Linda Lovelace as presented to the world in the early 1970s, and the second a revision of that history rewritten by its victim. The first half does acknowledge Chuck’s violence – his outburst on being released from jail, or the bruises Linda displays to her co-star Dolly. Nevertheless, the second half seems to unquestioningly vindicate Linda’s account – despite the polyphony of the overture, her account is privileged as the true one, the corrective; there is no Rashomon-style counterpoint of witness statements from Chuck or the other protagonists. It appears to be enough that the polygraph machine attests to her truthfulness.

For some the spectacle of female victimhood in a film written and directed by men will be problematic. Others might cite Linda’s Catholic background and read her ‘Ordeal’ as a ‘Passion’, a spiritual journey through sin and suffering leading to redemption. Even more, taking their cue from The Celluloid Closet, might place the story of a beautiful, resourceful woman betrayed by a handsome heel in the tradition of the 1940s women’s picture, and praise Lovelace as a Mildred Pierce of the spurious ‘sexual liberation’ era.

For more information and to check for updates about next year’s competition visit www.ifi.ie/writingaward

The judges also highly commended Tom Floyd’s review of Nebraska and commended Stephen McNeice’s review of Nobody’s Daughter Haewon.

Shocking Documentaries: Four Films that Sparked Outrage in Ireland

This month the Mary Raftery Journalism Fund, in association with the IFI and RTÉ, marks the 15th anniversary of the broadcast of the States of Fear documentaries with screenings and discussions examining the impact of the series on Saturday, May 24th. Mary Raftery’s exposure of the abuse and neglect practised in Ireland’s industrial schools caused a public outcry, pressuring the Irish Government to apologise for its role in perpetuating the system.

We in the IFI Irish Film Archive’s Tiernan MacBride library look at other documentaries which, for varying reasons, caused outrage in Ireland.

1. Ireland: The Tear and the Smile (1961)

This CBS documentary, examining contemporary Ireland, was broadcast to American audiences in 1961. Initially the Irish Government collaborated with the filmmakers, recognising the potential of the programme to transmit images of a thriving modern Ireland to potential investors in the U.S. The finished programme angered the State who believed it reinforced offensive stereotypes of Ireland as a poverty-stricken, primitive country decimated by unemployment and emigration. Sean Lemass maintained that his government had been grossly deceived by CBS but his letter of protest was sharply dismissed by the programme’s producer, “for us to pretend these situations did not exist would be journalistically dishonest.” [1]

2. Open Port (1968)

The Radharc team of priests produced programmes that examined moral and social issues within a religious context. In Open Port their documentation of alleged prostitution along the quays in Cork City drew censure because of their use of a hidden camera to film young girls boarding ships with sailors. The documentary sparked a media debate that ran for months; critics accused the team of infringing upon the subjects’ human rights to produce a sensationalist story, while supporters commended Radharc’s high journalistic standards and its unflinching exposure of a “social evil.” [3]

Fr. Leo Lennon, port Chaplain, calls for the closure of Cork’s quayside in Open Port.

3. Fairytale of Kathmandu (2007)
Nessa Ní Chaináin’s second documentary about the poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh began as a tribute to his work establishing education projects in Nepal. Her unease about the poet’s sexual relationships with several of the Nepalese youths he supported changed the focus of the film, however. Ó Searcaigh asserted that these were consensual relationships conducted with men above the Nepalese age of consent and accused Ní Chianáin of betraying his trust. She was concerned with the “disparity of power” [4] involved in the relationships between a 50-year-old wealthy westerner and poor 16- to 17-year-old Nepalese boys. The divisive film brewed up a media storm in Ireland but a subsequent Garda investigation resulted in no official charges being made against Ó Searcaigh.

4. The Pipe (2008)
This film chronicled the resistance of a local Mayo community to Shell Oil’s government-backed plans to lay a gas pipeline through Rossport. Risteárd Ó Domhnaill was concerned that Shell was manipulating the news to criminalise protestors and wished to give a voice to “respectable people being treated as if they were thugs.” [5] Though criticised in some quarters for its perceived lack of objectivity, the documentary captured shocking scenes of violence used by Gardaí in clashes with protestors, which bolstered support for the community’s struggle.

By Eilís Ní Raghallaigh

The IFI Irish Film Archive’s clippings and document collections contain thousands of files and images relating to all aspects of Irish and Irish-interest film and television production. They are available to view in the Tiernan MacBride library within library opening hours, or by appointment with the librarian. Please contact the IFI librarian, Fiona Rigney, for more information.

[1] Savage, R. J. (2003) Ireland in the New Century. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
[2] Savage, R.J. (1999) Ireland: The Tear and the Smile. In L. Dodd (Ed.), Nationalism Visions and Revisions (pp. 60-63). Dublin: FII Publishing, 1999. 60-63.
[3] Realist. (1969, January 1). Cork Quays. Cork Evening Echo.
[4] Sheridan, K. (1996, February 2). Sex, power and videotape. The Irish Times, pp.3.

[5] Clarke, D. (2010) Almost by accident, he was making a documentary… The Irish Times, pp. 9.

http://www.ifi.ie/statesoffear

So we're back in Cannes for another year of obsessing about schedules and trying to expertly judge queue lengths to pack in as many films as humanly possible!

I started my Cannes 2014 trip with The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby starring Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy which tells the story of a happily married couple whose lives are suddenly torn apart by a family tragedy and follows the journey they must take to see if they can rebuild their shattered relationship.

Jessica Chastain & cast of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby

It's hard to say much more without telling the reason for their marital stress (it isn't revealed for quite some time) but it's an enjoyable watch overall, even if some of the impressive supporting cast (Isabelle Huppert, William Hurt, Ciaran Hinds and Viola Davis) aren't used to any great value. But, to feel like you were there, I did manage to capture the pre-screening Q&A!

Hot on the heels of the Yves Saint Laurent biopic (of the same name) earlier this year, Cannes unveiled the second study of the fashion designer in Bertrand Bonello's drama playing in the Official Competition which is stylishly shot, with great music and - as you'd expect - fantastic costumes.

Jessica Hausner's Amour Fou played in Un Certain Regard and is beautifully shot with each frame almost resembling a painting resulting in a film that looks like a sequence of beautiful tableaux. It's slow moving but quietly engaging. But perhaps not the 'romantic comedy' that it's being referred to as.

The documentary Red Army follows the Russian ice hockey team during (and briefly after) the Cold War. With Russia currently so present in the news, Red Army is perfectly timed to give a fascinating insight into the world politics behind the sport and the characters who shaped it both on and off the rink. It's well told, humorous in parts, but ultimately chilling.

Watch the film trailer:

The cast and director Jaime Rosales were in attendance for the Un Certain Regard screening of Beautiful Youth. The films presents a bleak view of life for Spain's youth with few opportunities on offer, hence leading the central couple to decide to shoot a porn movie to earn some cash. Its style is refreshing (although I wasn't convinced that the Whatsapp sequences worked to demonstrate the passing of time, and seemed a little gimmicky) but bar that I was sufficiently drawn into the world of the young couple looking for some hope for their future. It was touching to see lead actress Ingrid Garcia-Jonsson so overcome with emotion due to the wonderful reaction of the audience to the screening.

Cast & crew of Beautiful Youth

Perhaps my favourite film to date was Abderraane Sissako's Timbuktu. This beautiful and delicately told film about religious fundamentalists spreading terror in the region has at it's heart the story of doting father and husband Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed) and the consequences he faces after accidentally killing the fisherman Amadou over a valued cow. The film contains some stunning imagery. The scene of the boys playing imaginary football (with no real ball due to the religious banning of the game) was powerfully simple, as was the memorable image of the soldier sitting on the roof against the moonlight listening to music being played by the people he was about to arrest (music had also been banned). But perhaps the most striking image was the panoramic and lingering shot of Kidane wading though the water to escape the dying Amadou on the opposite bank.

Cast & crew of Timbuktu

David Cronenberg has assembled an impressive cast (Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, Olivia Williams) for Maps to the Stars, his cutting look at our celebrity obsessed culture. With two colliding stories (one of a fading actress - Julianne Moore - haunted by her mother as she strives to be cast in the same role that brought her mother fame many years before, and the other of a Hollywood family with secrets aplenty and enough skeletons in the closet to feed The National Enquirer for decades!). Fine performances abound and the film is simply delicious in parts. For me, the first half heavily relied on jokes and references to other celebrities in the public domain, but it got a lot meatier and more engaging as it progressed towards its dramatic, Greek tragedy climax.

Next up in the Official Competition was Foxcatcherstarring Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo and an unrecognisable Steve Carell (who may have found a new calling in creepy and sinister roles). Based on a true story of two Olympic gold medallist wrestlers and brothers (Tatum and Ruffalo) who are taken under the wing of businessman and philanthropist John du Pont (Carell) to help bring them sporting glory. It all begins to go horribly wrong when that 'interest' begins to have a more sinister and obsessive side. It's a fascinating story and a treat to see Carell in such a different role.

Gente de Bien is a sweet Colombian film about a young boy, left by his mother to a father he barely knows. Struggling in downtown Bogota, the occasional employer of the boy's father takes pity on their situation and offers to take them on her family vacation over the Christmas break. I wouldn't imagine it'll be picking up any awards, but it was still an enjoyable watch.

And so with the first set of films under my belt, does it make the schedule seem less daunting now? Not a chance! With word of must-sees filtering through and my own selection, I'll still be spotted in queues around town staring at the programme schedule trying to figure out how to bi-locate!

A bientot,

Ross Keane

Ready for more complaints about queues? Welcome to the second and final blog from Cannes 2014!

Cast & crew of Xenia

Xenia played in Un Certain Regard and, directed by Panos H. Koutras, it follows two very different brothers who, after their mother passes away, go in search of the father who abandoned them as children. It's a camp affair overall, between the Greek Star audition (think X Factor) plot and a few musical numbers and dance routines thrown in for good measure. There are plenty of plot holes (didn't they do well to escape the police and sniffer dogs even though older brother Ody was giving younger brother Dany a piggyback?!) And there was also the bizarre sequence, reminiscent of The Night of the Hunter, where the two brothers drift along the river in a boat while various wildlife (including a giant sized rabbit!) come to the riverbank to watch them pass...? The film was picked up by a distributor but I don't see this having mass appeal on release. I managed to grab a quick video of Koutras and cast in their pre-screening address.

One of my favourites has been Damian Szifron's Wild Tales. This thoroughly refreshing and hugely entertaining Argentinian film pulls together six different, unrelated stories, each offering it's very own 'wild tale', largely about people on the edge losing control and crossing the line that society usually demands we stay behind. It works exceptionally well overall (although the humour level doesn't quite sustain throughout) and four of the six are truly wonderful. A special shout-out has to go to the third story which tells the tale of a cocky driver in a fancy car overtaking and abusing a slow driver in his clapped-out banger, hurling abuse as he speeds by. A few miles down the road however, he gets a flat, and who should be the next driver to arrive on the scene...? What follows is a hilarious exchange of revenge exacted which escalates and escalates until it reaches it's unimaginable and utterly hilarious climax. The whole film is wildly entertaining and a complete breath of fresh air. It's probably simply too much fun to win any major awards, but you never know...

Director Damian Szifron

In an almost-sequel, Mange tes Morts/Eat Your Bones by Jean-Charles Hue focuses on the traveling community in France, in particular three brothers (one of whom has just been released from prison following a fifteen year stretch) and their cousin. The most interesting scenes for me were the very natural conversations on the community's halting site with old rivalries coming to the fore. The main thrust of the film follows the four men as they attempt to break into a scrap yard to steal a consignment of copper that the youngest brother Mickael has learnt of. While Mange tes Morts could be viewed as a sequel (after Hue's 2010 film La BM du Seigneur which followed the same characters) it can equally be viewed independently.

Cannes favourites Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne returned with Two Days, One Night, this time opting to work with a well-known actress (Marion Cotillard) instead of their usual lesser known faces. The story, set over a weekend, follows Sandra (Cotillard) as she sets out, reluctantly, to meet each of her colleagues one by one in order to secure their support for her in a ballot the following Monday where they must vote between her keeping her job or all the staff receiving a bonus. The main themes of the film revolve around depression/mental health and the wider economic situation. Many seem to have issue with the credibility of such a well known actress taking on the role of such an ordinary, down on her luck employee, but I had no such concerns. I don't think it's the Dardennes' finest work, but it's still absorbing and worthy of being in the Official Competition.

Pascale Ferran's Bird People is an interesting and unusual film which played in Un Certain Regard. I absolutely loved the opening sequence which randomly dropped in, for a few moments, on various different conversations during a train journey and the private thoughts people were having. Seamlessly going from someone having a heated argument to joining someone else listening to classical music on their headphones, it was a captivating opening. Once the main film gets started it very much splits into two stories. The first follows Gary (Josh Charles) and while staying at the airport hotel (where most of the action of the film takes place) he decides to change everything about his life, starting with quitting his job and leaving his wife. The second part follows Audrey (Anais Demoustier), one of the hotel's chambermaids who (literally) wants to soar to new heights (the clue is in the title people!). The Carte Noire IFI French Film Festival director Marie-Pierre Richard simply adored this film. You heard it here first!

Cast & crew of Bird People

From a flight of fancy to a journey of despair, in Hope, deep in the Sahara Desert, a young man from Cameroon comes to the rescue of Hope, a Nigerian, as they navigate a dangerous journey to illegally gain access to Europe. Desperately bleak with obstacles facing them at every turn along their way, there is also great beauty, and the chemistry between the two leads is marvellous. I found this very engaging, powerful and thought-provoking, though never an easy watch.

Playing outside competition, the title of Andre Techine's latest release, In the Name of my Daughter, may sound like a Sally Field made-for-TV movie, but it is in fact a solid piece based on a true story. Set in Nice, following the breakdown of her marriage, Agnes le Roux (Adele Haenel) returns home to her mother Renee (played by the ever wonderful Catherine Deneuve), owner of the Casino le Palais. She quickly befriends Maurice (a truly wonderful performance from Guillaume Canet), her mother's confidante and legal advisor, and their relationship deepens, despite his having a wife, son and string of other lovers. A fixed game at the casino, rigged by the mafia, throws the future of the business in jeopardy and loyalties are put to the test and broken. The film opens in the present day and then goes back in time, so despite me not being familiar with this true story (it apparently was back in the news only weeks ago with new twists and turns), one is aware from the beginning that Agnes has been missing, presumed dead for over 30 years and that Renee believes it was at the hands of Maurice. Techine offers us a very conventional film. The performances are great and the story is intriguing, and this should be met warmly by those interested in solid French film.

Following on from Saint Laurent on Sunday, it was time for me to move fashion house from YSL to Christian Dior. Dior and I is the new documentary from Frederic Tcheng which is a behind-the-scenes look at new Artistic Director, Raf Simons' first haute couture collection in his new role. The access granted to Tcheng is fantastic and the cast of characters involved in bringing the collection to fruition demonstrates a group of passionate, dedicated and loyal employees; and that in itself poses a slight problem for the film. They're all too nice! Dior and I lacks the foreboding central character of say Anna Wintour (she pops up in this too!) in The September Issue or her (perhaps more interesting) second in command Grace Coddington. Raf Simons is a much gentler character - although the cracks do begin to appear as the show draws closer. And tensions do begin to mount as the atelier team are put under increasing pressure, especially when one of the premieres doesn't cope particularly well with change or stress. Overall the documentary presents a rare opportunity to get to see the work and passion that goes into making a fashion collection and catwalk show, and it makes for a great companion piece to Saint Laurent.

Dior and I

Nadav Schirman's The Green Prince is a slickly produced documentary about one of Israel's most prized spies, the son of a top Hamas leader. Using a combination of first person testimony, archive footage and reconstructions, it charts how Mosab Hassan Youssef (code name The Green Prince) was recruited by the Israelis and how (and why) he turned on his own people, including his family and friends, and the relationship he developed with his Shin Bet handler, Gonen Ben Yitzhak. Produced by Schirman along with two-time Oscar winner Simon Chinn (Man on Wire and Searching for Sugar Man) and Oscar winner John Battsek (One Day in September), it has all the trademarks of these highly produced documentaries. It employs the real life thriller approach reminiscent of The Imposter and is it a fascinating, almost incredible story. It picked up the Audience Award at Sundance and I'd imagine it should also get a lot of attention from Cannes.

In Un Certain Regard, Mathieu Amalric steps behind (as well as in front of) the camera in Le Chambre Bleue/The Blue Room. Two lovers, Julien (Amalric) and Delphine (Lea Drucker), conducting an affair, post-coitally lie in their blue room contemplating spending their lives together. This then cuts to the police interrogating Julien for a crime we know is related to their affair and respective spouses. But what has he done and is he indeed guilty? This is a stylish and classy film. It wavers slightly towards the end but it is still a very interesting and engaging film from the director/actor Amalric.

So what will win the coveted Palme d'Or and the other major awards? It's a hard one to call. For the Official Competition, as I was leaving Mommy (Xavier Dolan) and Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard; who has never won the Palme) had both just screened and were generating positive word, while many are still talking about Mister Turner (Mike Leigh) and Wild Tales (Damian Szifron) from earlier in the Festival. Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev) - which is showing tonight - was being talked about as one of the favourites before the Festival even began.

So that's it for me for Cannes 2014. I look forward to hearing (and debating the worthiness) of all of the winners. Until next May...

Ross Keane

Read Ross' festival blog - part one - here.

Eilís Ní Raghallaigh from the IFI's Tiernan MacBride Library looks at three filmmakers who attempted to capture Joyce on screen.

The IFI will mark this Bloomsday, June 16th, with screenings of John Huston’s The Dead and Frank Stapleton’s A Second of June. Huston’s masterpiece is generally thought to be the most successful adaptation of James Joyce’s work [1], while film adaptations of his most famous novel, Ulysses, have been viewed as problematic. As one critic wrote, “Filming Ulysses was an impossible task – that elusive, magnificent, joyful monster of a book is words, words, words.” [2] In the IFI’s Tiernan MacBride library we look at three filmmakers who sought to capture the essence of Joyce’s masterpiece on film.

Gabriel Conroy (Donal McCann) makes an after-dinner speech in The Dead.

Ulysses (1967)

Joseph Strick’s adaptation of Ulysseswas dubbed “psychotic in its blasphemy and dirtiness” by Archbishop McQuaid [3] and was banned in Ireland for over 30 years. Internationally, reviewers praised the actors’ performances in the film but criticised its failure to capture visually Joyce’s evocative prose and the novel’s rich humanity. Key elements of Joyce’s work were seen to have been diminished or excised in favour of its sexual content, which proved shocking enough to “send one reeling out of the theatre.” [4] Modern re-assessments of the film have praised the director’s bold experimentation with cinematic form in a manner that is true to the spirit of Joyce’s own writing. [5]

Leopold Bloom (Milo O’Shea) pretends to model Molly’s underwear in Ulysses.
Copyright 1967 Contemporary Films

Ulys (1997)

Tim Booth’s five-minute animation follows Joyce’s struggle with the writing of Ulysses, which he declares to be "a real bollix of a buk", something the writer himself is alleged to have said. [6] The animation offers an outline of the novel’s plot, gives vivid snapshots of the bawdiness and banter of its characters and pokes fun at Joyce’s formidable reputation as a genius.

In Ulys, Joyce writes to his brother Stanislaus about his struggles with Ulysses.

Bloom (2003)

Sean Walsh stated that in adapting Joyce’s Ulysses to film he "deleted the bits I don’t understand and the bits which bored me." [7] Walsh wanted to demystify Joyce’s work, to make it accessible to general audiences who were daunted by its perceived complexity. Negative reviews of the film concentrated once again on its failure to "film the unfilmable" [8] and on its placement of Molly Bloom’s infamous soliloquy at the beginning, rather that at the end, of the film. Generally however, the film was well received and praised for its playfulness, visual inventiveness and re-telling of the novel in plain words and pictures. Joycean scholar Senator David Norris enthusiastically declared it "a triumphant reinterpretation of James Joyce’s masterpiece." [9]

Stephen Rea and Angeline Ball play Bloom and Molly in happier times in Bloom.
Copyright 2003 Stoney Road Films.

By Eilís Ní Raghallaigh

The IFI Irish Film Archive’s clippings, image and document collections contain thousands of files and images relating to all aspects of Irish and Irish-interest film and television production. They are available to view in the Tiernan MacBride library within library opening hours, or by appointment with the librarian. Please contact the IFI librarian, Fiona Rigney, for more information.

REFERENCES

[1] Carty, C. (2009, June 6). Joyce’s novel idea. The Irish Times, pp. 23.

[2] Farren, R. (2001, February 11). A blooming celebration. The Sunday Independent, pp. 27L.

[3] Shortall, E. (2012, November 11). Archbishop in plot to ban Ulysses film. The Sunday Times.

[4]Wolf, W. & Wolf, L.K. (1979). Landmark films: The cinema and our century.New York: Paddington Press.

[5] McCarthy, G. (2009, May 24). Portraits of the artist as cineaste. The Sunday Times, pp. 6-7.

[6] Rockett, R. & Finn, E. (n.d.) Frameworks: Ulys. Irish film & TV research online. Retrieved June 3^rd, 2014, from http://www.tcd.ie/irishfilm/showfilm.php?fid=56570.

[7] Sheehan, M. (2000, September 17). Irish to bring Ulysses alive on big screen. The Sunday Times, pp. 3.

[8] Moloney, G. (2003, July 22). New film of ‘Ulysses.’ The Irish Times, p. 13.

[9] Dwyer, C. (2003, July 20). At last, a Molly who Blooms brazenly. The Sunday Independent, p. 19.

This month, the IFI examines the work of women in film and the representation of women on film in Beyond the Bechdel Test throughout July. Related activities include panel discussions, screenings of archival footage from the IFI’s Irish Film Archive and a chance to see seminal films such as Pat Murphy’s Maeve on the big screen. It will come as no surprise then that this month’s blog from the IFI’s Tiernan MacBride Library focuses on four Irish films with female protagonists that are directed by women.

Mary Jackson in Maeve.
Copyright 1981 BFI Production Board.

Pat Murphy on the set of Maeve.

Snakes and Ladders (1996)

Set in a modern, lively Dublin which prefigures stylish urban films such as About Adam, Trish McAdam’s debut feature explores the friendship between two street performers, Jean and Kate. The film was nine years in the making as the director’s perceived inexperience discouraged potential investors. Following various setbacks, Chris Sievernich (producer of The Dead) was so impressed by both McAdam’s script and by her tenacity that the project was finally brought to fruition. The film, described by McAdam as a “funny drama and a serious comedy” [1] explores friendship, romance and ambition from a female viewpoint. On its release, audiences responded positively to the authenticity of the film’s setting and characters, “for the first time I saw something on screen that resembled my own experience.” [2]

Gina Moxley and Pom Boyd in their roles as Jean and Kate in Snakes and Ladders.
Copyright 1996 Livia Films.

Trish McAdam on the set of Snakes and Ladders.
Copyright 1996 Livia Films.

Clare sa Spéir (2001)

In this short film, Audrey O’Reilly tells the story of harassed mother Clare who is under-appreciated by her five children and her self-involved husband. She removes herself from the drudgery of her domestic life by leaving the family home for the family tree house, in a bid to break a world record. The family’s shock and anger gradually transmute into a new-found respect for Clare’s needs and worth. O’Reilly explores familial tensions, evolving gender roles and the female psyche with humour and playfulness. The director’s playful sense of humour is present again in her tongue-in-cheek apology to the second level students studying her film as part of their curriculum who “consider Clare to be the Peig Sayers of the media section of the leaving-cert.” [3]

Clare’s bewildered family headed by Seán Mac Ginley as Eoin in Clare sa Spéir.
Copyright 2001 Zanzibar Films.

Audrey O’Reilly surrounded by cast and crew on the set of Clare sa Spéir.
Copyright 2001 Zanzibar Films.

32A (2007)

Marian Quinn won the IFI’s Tiernan MacBride Screenwriting Award for her 32A script in 2002, and the feature won an award for Best First Film at the 2007 Galway Film Fleadh. It is a semi-autobiographical coming of age story based on Quinn’s experiences growing up in Dublinin the 1970s. Thirteen-year-old Maeve makes her first forays into adulthood as she experiences her first kiss, experiments with drugs and clashes with her friends. The authentic low-key period detail and the naturalistic performances captured in the film are impressive, especially in light of the fact that the film was shot in 28 days on a budget of only €1.5 million. Quinn’s determination and pragmatism are apparent in her advice to other budding filmmakers “never wait for permission and if need be always do it yourself.” [4]

Ailish McCarthy as Maeve in 32A.
Copyright 1997 Janey Pictures.

Marian Quinn and Orla Brady on the set of 32A.
Copyright 1997 Janey Pictures.

Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey

Lelia Doolan’s documentary explores the political life of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, a prominent figure in the civil rights movement in 1960s and 1970s Belfast. Dubbed “Castro in a miniskirt” [5] by her detractors, she created a media furore in 1972 when she slapped the British Home Secretary in the face for suggesting that the paratroopers shot the Bloody Sunday protestors in self-defence. Doolan draws on archival footage and eight years of interviews with Devlin to create a compelling character study of a fiercely intelligent, articulate woman who weathered both an assassination attempt and distorted media portrayals of her actions. Doolan’s own integrity, enthusiasm and drive are captured by Gabriel Byrne’s description of her, “She can plamás, cajole, beg, borrow and sweetly bully. She is passionate about what she believes in but never self-serving.” [6]

Bernadette Devlin in a sea of policemen in Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey.
Copyright 2011 Lelia Doolan.

Lelia Doolan attending an event in the IFI.
Copyright 1997 Irish Film Institute.

By Eilís Ní Raghallaigh

The IFI Irish Film Archive’sclippings, image and document collections contain thousands of files and images relating to all aspects of Irish and Irish-interest film and television production. They are available to view in the Tiernan MacBride library within library opening hours, or by appointment with the librarian. Please contact the IFI librarian, Fiona Rigney, for more information.

REFERENCES

[1] Eustace, S. (1998, February 4). Pierce Turner: movie star. Wexford Echo.

[2] Hayes, K. (1998, February 26). Snakes and Ladders. The Irish Times.

[3] O’Reilly, A. (n.d.) Me & my film. Clare-sa-Speir. Retrieved July 10^th, 2014, from http://claresaspeir.wordpress.com/about/

[4] Barter, P. (2009, October 19). Finding her own route. Metro, pp. 12.

[5] Maguire, J. (2011, November 20). Modern fable hits a home run. Sunday Business Post, pp. 32.

[6] Farrelly, P. (2013, December). Lelia’s picture palace. Irish America. Retrieved July 10^th, 2014 from http://irishamerica.com/2012/12/lelias-picture-palace/

Over the summer months the IFI Irish Film Archive will be undertaking a major digital infrastructure upgrade project that will radically improve its ability to collect, preserve and make accessible the digital collections which it is acquiring in ever increasing quantities. Thanks to the assistance of the Department of Arts Heritage & the Gaeltacht the installation of high speed fibre optic cabling and new editing and ingestion equipment will see the archive expand its capacity to take in borne digital material and to create high resolution digital copies of the film and tape materials that it already holds.

On the cusp of this exciting development we felt it was an opportune time to go behind the scenes of the IFI Irish Film Archive and meet the people who care for our National Moving Image Collections.

Kasandra O'Connell

Kasandra O’Connell, Head of the IFI Irish Film Archive: “As Head of the Archive I have overall responsibility for strategy, policy and the technical development of the Archive. Over the last five years there has been a dramatic shift from an analogue environment to a digital one and the IFI Irish Film Archive, along with most other Archives around the world, is faced with the challenge of preserving and managing Digital collections to ensure their longevity. As most films and their accompanying materials are now being created and distributed in a digital format it is critical that we address this problem quickly to ensure no relevant material is lost. This infrastructure project is the first phase of our Digital Preservation and Access Strategy and is a crucial development for us as it is the technical foundation upon which we will build our digital policies and procedures, thus ensuring we can continue to care for the remarkable collections we have responsibility for and make them more widely available in the future through new technology based access solutions.’’

Raelene Casey

Raelene Casey, Moving Image Access Officer: “My job is to find ways to make the content of the archive more accessible to all member of the public both commercially and non-commercially. We’re a not-for- profit private company, but we hold Ireland’s National Film Heritage in our care. As a result we need to strike a balance between providing commercial access to the collections and making sure our shared film heritage is available to everyone who wishes to explore it. As my colleagues and I are navigating the nascent waters of digital preservation and access we’re exploring ways to make this balance possible within the resources available to us. If you’ve any questions about accessing footage from the archive or fees involved, please email me.”

Columb Gilna

Columb Gilna, Collections Officer: “There are many different aspects to the job of a CO at the IFA. One minute I’m working with a roll of 16mm Black and White film from the 1930s (from our physical/analogue collection) and the next it’s a “.mov” file (from our digital asset collection). But it all boils down to collection care; through tracking, examination, documentation and correct storage. Our job is to follow best practice in preservation and collection management. Only then can the notion of sustained access become a reality.”

Vincent Kearney

Vincent Kearney, Archive Assistant: “As an archive assistant, I register and make technical assessments of film material being considered for inclusion in the Archive’s collections. Once a decision regarding acquisition has been made, I catalogue items joining the collections and prepare them for storage.”

Anja Mahler

Anja Mahler, Collections Assistant: “I am responsible for documentation and care of acquisitions from organisations with whom we have an archiving agreement, such as the Irish Film Board, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and The Arts Council. In my work I oversee condition assessment, accessioning, cataloguing, preserving and annual assessments of materials on 35mm film and tape carrier. A digital infrastructure would allow for deposits to be in high resolution file format instead of tape, employing a Digital Asset Management System that will be of benefit to all processes involved in archiving film heritage.”

Gavin Martin

Gavin Martin, Collections Officer: “I am responsible for digitising the Archive’s Film Collections. My remit is to preserve or in some cases restore the image quality of the films I am turning into digital assets; these are then held as large uncompressed preservation files and as smaller digital access files which can be accessed by a variety of users. This upgrade will enable me to deal with much larger file formats that our current workflow allows for and I will also be able to undertake more sophisticated and extensive restoration projects.”

Manus McManus

Manus McManus, Senior Collections Officer: “I oversee the technical and preservation management of the Archive collections, liaise with film depositors and post-production facilities, and support the Head of the Archive in developing and implementing Archive strategy, policy and procedures. I will be assisting in adapting and expanding our collections-management policy to embrace the Archive’s new digital assets.”

Anita Ní Nualláin

Anita Ní Nualláin, Archive Assistant: “I am currently registering and cataloguing one of the largest non-professional collections in the Archive. I also check the condition of film material going out to and returning from screenings, and performs audits of at-risk material in the collections.”

Eilís Ní Raghallaigh

Eilís Ní Raghallaigh, Library Assistant: “As a library assistant in the IFI Irish Film Archive’s Tiernan MacBride Library, as well as supporting the librarian in the delivery of the library service, I am updating the library’s clippings archive and write a monthly library blog.”

Eoin O'Donohoe

Eoin O’Donohoe, Acquisitions/Compliance Assistant: “I assist with the incoming Irish Film Board and Broadcasting Authority of Ireland collections, mostly dealing with digital video tape. A large part of the role is carrying out condition assessment of the material to ensure that only the best quality tapes enter into the archive. Following the accession and cataloguing process, the material finds a permanent home on the shelves in the vault.”

Kieran O'Leary

Kieran O’Leary, Collections & Access Assistant:“I help to facilitate access to the archive’s holdings. The digital refurb will allow greater access to the collections, both within the building and off-site, as well as adding an extra dimension of preservation.”

Fiona Rigney

Fiona Rigney, Librarian and Document Archivist: “As the Librarian and Document Archivist I am responsible for the care of our Special collections and library. I also provide access and research assistance to everyone who uses the library and paper archive. The Library holds one of the largest collections of film related publications in Ireland and the document collections provide contextual information on the production and history of Irish film, the Irish film industry, and film exhibition in Ireland; they consist of press clippings, filmmakers’ correspondence, production notes, images and posters. All our collections are available to the public, for more information on our collections and our opening hours please visit the Library page”.

Learn more about the IFI Irish Film Archive and visit our website.

Matthew McAteer Ph.D. writes about his time in the IFI Irish Film Archive when he researched the Radharc film and document collection, and provides some handy tips for researchers...

I was a college student who spent two years locked inside the IFI Irish Film Archive in Temple Bar. Sounds ominous, doesn’t it! Actually I was doing research on an old TV show produced by a handful of Catholic priests called Radharc. It ran for three and a half decades and the archive preserves all of its 420 episodes along with the documents that came with them (which fill more cardboard boxes than I care to mention – the show’s co-founder Fr. Joe Dunn kept records of, well, pretty much everything).

In contrast to a lot of other religious and broadcasting archives this is an exceptional collection. Radharc was Ireland’s most important independent documentary production unit, and outside of RTÉ this collection is Ireland’s largest of a single television series. Covering almost 40 years its value is broad. My own research looks specifically at what it tells us about Irish secularisation. However it is also a mine of information on TV history and religious history. Radharc footage is routinely used by filmmakers as a record of change in Irish culture and for scholars these hundreds of interviews with everyone from Irish travellers to theologians, from sociologists to guerrilla fighters, capture key changes in how Irish people saw the world. Given how intimate the film unit was with the Catholic Church, the access the IFI Irish Film Archive provides to these reams of personal correspondence is rather special, with none of the delays associated with some church archives.My research was carried out between 2010 and 2014 under a unique scholarship put together by the IFI Irish Film Archive, the Radharc Trust and UCD. The first two years were spent in the archive where for three days a week I would catalogue the 650 files which accompany the Radharc film collection, copying anything relevant to my research, and transferring them to the archive’s preservation vaults. The rest of my weeks were spent viewing the programmes. In 2012 I left the archive to work on my thesis and four years and three months after my first day in the archive I got my Ph.D.

This partnership between the IFI Irish Film Archive, UCD and the Radharc Trust has now successfully concluded. Radharc’s paper collection has been comprehensively catalogued and an in-depth history of one of Ireland’s longest running television series been produced. To celebrate that fact I’ve decided to put together a list of the top 10 tips for any researcher adventurous enough to take on a long-term project of this nature. Enjoy!

Matthew McAteer Ph.D.

Matthew's tips for Ph.D. researchers embarking on a project...

1.Treat your role as a normal job. Maintaining full-time hours can help to integrate the long-term researcher into a working archive.

2. Interview anyone connected with your subject, right off the mark. I came within a hare’s breadth of a former Radharc director at a function and told myself to wait until I was more firmed up on the history. He had passed away before I got a chance.

3. Don’t wait for the paper collection to ‘speak to you’, photocopying every document you can get your hands on for the first year. Narrow things down, develop a general thesis and stick to it (it’s harder than it sounds).

4. Don’t photocopy anything if you are permitted to use a camera instead. My eureka moment came over a year in when on a visit to another archive I saw a researcher doing just that.

5. Begin with the documents which give you an insight into the personalities involved. Notes of meetings and personal correspondence take priority over programme scripts, cue sheets, invoices etc.

6. Don’t try to watch every episode. If you are researching a long-running series, start chronologically and then narrow your viewing down as the thesis topic takes shape.

7.Book your archive viewings well in advance. Don’t be blathering ‘can I use the, erm, beta-player today ... tomorrow, I mean ... ah, shur look I’m grand for now, gulp!'

8. Don’t ask to view things on actual film if at all possible. Stick to whatever viewing tapes are there.

9. Don’t start transcribing anything. It’s great to have a transcript of illegible handwriting for easy reference but it just takes too long. And no, you are not going to get an undergraduate to volunteer their services.

10. Don’t waste your time researching film technologies unless crucial. I have oodles of notes on cameras, film stock, audio recorders etc which I never used in the end.

View our online exhibition of the Radharc Document and Film Collection held at the IFI Irish Film Archive.

The call for entries to The Radharc Awards 2014 is now open.

The author’s Ph.D. thesis “A Programme about Religion: Radharc and the Secularisation of Irish Society, 1959-1996” was formally ratified by University College Dublin in July 2014.

Further information at: https://ucd-ie.academia.edu/MatthewMcAteer

As part of 28 Times Cinema, Evan Horan was chosen to represent the IFI at this year's Venice Days/Giornate Degli Autori. Here's an update on his adventures...

As I am now approaching the end of my time in Venice, it seems impossible to remember life outside the festival routine and consider returning to normality. To explain why I'm in Venice, I have been selected by the IFI and Europa Cinemas to be part of the 28 Times Cinema initiative which allows a group of 28 young cinéphiles, one from each EU member state, the chance to experience the world's longest running film festival and act as a jury in selecting the winning film for the Venice Days category.

After coming off the plane at Venice airport, I headed straight into the first screening, Before I Disappear, directed by and starring Shawn Christensen and based on his Oscar-winning short Curfew. The film tells the story of Richie, a man unable to cope with life, who is reluctantly given the responsibility of taking care of his niece, Sophia. Before I Disappear takes place over one night and it has an energetic pulse in showing one man's need to take responsibility for his own life and act no longer like a child, similarly to Sofia Coppola's Golden Lion winning Somewhere.

With the majority of press screenings taking place in the early hours of the morning, I unfortunately missed my chance to catch the festival's opening film Birdman by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Despite this, I decided to stand outside the red carpet for the film's premiere in the Sale Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema. After spotting members of this year's Official Selection jury panel such as Tim Roth, Sandy Powell and Joan Chen, members of Birdman's cast and crew started to make their way onto the army of photographers. Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Michael Keaton and Iñárritu were all in attendance to officially launch the festival.

That evening we watched Mita Tova (The Farewell Party), an Israeli-German co-production directed by Tal Granit and Sharon Maymon. Delivering a balance between humour and drama for those who are facing death, the film delves into the controversial issue of self-euthanasia. It provides another angle on the issues explored in Haneke's Amour and certainly stands as one of the most accessible films from this year's category.

Starting off my first full day at the festival on Thursday, I began with Xavier Beauvois's La rançon de la gloire (The Price of Fame), a much lighter piece than his previous work in Of Gods and Men, I then headed over to the Palazzo del Casinò to catch Guy Myhill's The Goob. This coming-of-age tale shows a protagonist who starting to realise his own path from the influence of his community. Another title to add to the genre of British social realism, the film's casting stands out with newcomer Liam Walpole and Sean Harris as Goob's chilling stepfather.

On entering our next screening, I slowly noticed that there was a sense of commotion in the queue with a line of photographers preparing to pounce. Then out of nowhere, Lena Dunham, Kirsten Dunst and Kate Mara strutted past us into the theatre due to their association to the Miu Miu Women's Talesprogramme, which has developed eight female directed short films. The screening featured So Yong Kim's Spark and Light and Miranda July's Somebody. As an enormous fan of the latter's work, I was thrilled as July was announced into the theatre. Somebody is a companion short to quite an ambitious project in which July has developed a new messaging system in a corresponding app. In an age where texts, emails and phone calls are constantly exchanged, Somebodyaims to reintroduce a sense of spontaneity in how we connect where a nearby stranger can read out a message from your loved one.

I managed to fit in Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes, a tense drama dealing with the problem of foreclosure starring Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon. Day 2 was then capped off with Adrián Biniez's El 5 de Talleres (El Cinco), examining the process of making a fresh start as the lead comes to terms that his career as a footballer is coming to an end.

Friday kicked off with the jury making its way to the Venice Days headquarters for a panel discussion on European film distribution with Georgette Ranucci from Lucky Red and the director of the Sofia Film Festival, Mira Staleva. The pair discussed the different challenges facing the European film industry and shared anecdotes about the audience trends from their own countries. The afternoon was spent in the extravagant Hotel Excelsior where I heard from the ambassadors of the Miu Miu Women's Tales which featured several names from the previous day's screening along with 12 Years a Slave producer Dede Gardner. The women reflected on their experiences of working in the industry.

In preparation for a panel discussion I watched some micro-budget projects, one of which is an Irish film, Blood Cells, by Joseph Bull and Luke Seomore. The son of Irish immigrant parents, Adam (Barry Ward) is a farmer whose livelihood has been devastated by Foot and Mouth disease. He is an isolated figure who embarks on a journey throughout the UK in order to reconnect with the people who have fallen by the wayside over the years.

One of my main goals of the festival was to see a film in the Sala Grande, the festival's main theatre in the Palazzo del Cinema so first thing on Friday morning, I made my way to a press screening of Manglehorn, directed by David Gordon Green. Starring Al Pacino as the film's eponymous character, he is a gentle and solitary man who is simply getting on with life, regularly visiting an array of characters including a boisterous con artist (Harmony Korine) and a timid banker, beautifully acted by Holly Hunter. But it is Pacino who dominates this subtle piece, reminding us once again that he is incomparable to any other actor.

Sunday's screenings included Laurent Cantet's Retour à Ithaque (Return To Ithaca) and Larry Clark's The Smell of Us. Having great admiration for both Entre les murs (The Class) and Kids, I was intrigued to see what both filmmakers had to showcase. Cantet explores the long lasting effects of Cuba's difficult past through the reunion of five friends who have not been together in over 16 years. On the other hand, The Smell of Us focuses on a group of subversive Parisian youths who interact with their urban playground by skating around and getting stoned. This gang are a product of their generation, resulting in incredibly explicit and destructive situations. Certainly a divisive film, I can't help but feel that Clark has not yet realised that the '90s were nearly two decades ago.

Our first jury meeting took place on Sunday and finally gave a chance for the 28 of us

to share our varying opinions on the films we had seen by that point.

I then managed to obtain a ticket for the main premiere of David Oelhoffen's Loin des hommes (Far from Men). As I once again made my way to the Sale Grande, the fact that Viggo Mortensen was attending led to a different atmosphere than before. Surprised by Mortensen's skill in speaking French and Arabic, the film has a Western sensibility as two men embark across the frontier in 1954 Algeria. With an expected selection of breathtaking landscape shots, the film ultimately lacks any suspense that you associate with the genre.

28 Times Cinema is an initiative launched jointly in 2010 by Europa Cinemas, the Giornate Degli Autori and the Lux Prize of the European Parliament, welcoming 28 filmgoers to represent a cinema of the Europa Cinemas network as well as one of the 28 member countries of the European Union.

This series of blog posts will include interviews with directors who will be screening their films at this year's IFI Stranger Than Fiction Documentar Film Festival (Sept 25th - 28th).

First up we have Kim Longinotto whose documentary Love is All will have its Irish premiere at IFI Stranger Than Fiction on Saturday, September 27th at 6.15pm. Kim will take part in Q&A following the film (book here).

Love is All

Tell us about the film you have directed as part of IFI Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Film Festival this month?

The film is called Love is All. It's a film journey through the 20th century up to 2014 looking at love in all its many forms

How did you get involved in the project or did the project start with you?

Heather Croall from Sheffield Documentary Film Festival asked me if I wanted to make a film using the BFI Archive and a soundtrack by Richard Hawley.I was delighted - it's not often you get asked to make a film. I said I'd love to as long as I could make it with Ollie Huddleston who is a brilliant editor. I loved the idea of discovering unlikely stories from the past century Also, I was intrigued to see what impact Richard Hawley's music would have when it was put with archive film. I was used to black and white, silent movies being paired with silly piano or safe jazz music, not contemporary vocals. As we hoped, the singing really resonates with the images and creates another dimension.

How long have you been working on the project?

We only had 8 weeks to edit it. That was the scary part as it took ages to trawl through the enormous BFI archive and it felt like we had a very short time to put it together. Luckily we had help from Jan Faull at BFI and also Graham Relton at Yorkshire Film Archive found us loads of special stuff from his huge stock of films. He really seemed to know what we were after and threw himself into finding footage that would work with the film.

Kim Longinotto

What really excites, inspires or motivates you about documentary film?

The films I enjoy watching are those that tell a story and where you can get involved with someone else's experience in a very direct way. I want to feel that the film means something to me and my life. I also watch a lot of TV and fiction. I watched every single Breaking Bad, The Wire and The Sopranos. Louis CK has been very comforting to me.

Who do you think will enjoy the movie you have directed?

My house-mate Colin has watched it three times. He took it up to Liverpool and watched it again with his dad. When it showed at Sheffield it was in the middle of a field in a marquee on a big screen. A lot of people had been drinking and were also a bit stoned and they seemed to get into the swing of it immediately. Ollie and I walked around watching people's faces as it was our first screening. It seemed to be a good watch late at night with a full moon just outside. The atmosphere was great. We were very excited then.

Love is All

What other films at the festival are you looking forward to seeing?

I haven't looked at the programme yet - I'll do that now.

Love is All will have its Irish premiere at IFI Stranger Than Fiction on Saturday, September 27th at 6.15pm. Kim will take part in Q&A following the film (book here).

It Came From Connemara!!, director/producer Brian Reddin talks about the making of his documentary aheads of it's Dublin premiere at IFI Stranger Than Fiction on Sept 27th.

This series of blog posts will include interviews with directors who will be screening their films at this year's IFI Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Film Festival (Sept 25th - 28th).

Next up we have Brian Reddin whose documentary It Came from Connemara!! will have its Dublin premiere at IFI Stranger Than Fiction on Saturday, September 27th at 10.00pm.
Brian will take part in Q&A following the film (book here).

It Came From Connemara!!

Tell us about the film you have directed as part of IFI Stranger than Fiction Documentary Film Festival this month?

My film tells the story of the time legendary B movie producer, Roger Corman, came to Connemara to establish a film studio. Corman was and remains a Hollywood legend. He revolutionized the way movies were made and launched the cinematic careers of Coppola, Scorsese, Nicholson and De Niro, among many others.

In five years during the 90’s Corman made 20 feature films in Connemara and managed to upset both the unions and the tastes of cinephiles. But, those who worked for him adored the experience. Corman gave them an opportunity to learn the film industry and a chance to progress through the film making ranks. He helped to launch many production careers in Ireland and there are many who credit him with their success.

My film tells the whole story of what came from Connemara during those five gloriously gruesome years. The documentary features exclusive interviews with Roger Corman, Don 'The Dragon' Wilson, James Brolin and Corbin Bernsen as well as interviews with the Irish cast and crew.

How did you get involved in the project or did the project start with you?

I originated the project. I was always a fan of Roger Corman’s movies, especially his adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe, and I was aware he was making movies in Ireland. At the time, I was producing a movie review show and I requested permission to visit his sets, but we were not allowed film at his studios. So, I was always curious about what was being made there and who was working there. It was intriguing because we heard that David Carradine was there one day and James Brolin the next. However, little was known about the studio. With the 20^thanniversary of his Irish studio approaching, I decided to explore whether he would be interested in participating in a documentary about his time in Ireland and thankfully he was. TG4 quickly came on board with financing and the BAI then supported it.

Brain Reddin

How long have you been working on the project?

I first approached Corman a year ago and was shooting an interview with him in Los Angeles six months later. As soon as he got involved, everything else fell into place. Between research, shooting and post, the entire project took a year.

What really excites, inspires or motivates you about documentary film?

I love big Hollywood blockbusters as much as anyone. However, for the most part, in the past decade, the only time I have ever really thought about something I have seen in the cinema after the credits have rolled is when I have seen a well-made documentary. I love Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield as much as I love Scorsese or Corman. Documentaries can make a difference. They can make you think longer and harder about a subject and they can inspire you to find out more. ‘Grizzly Man’, ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’, ‘The Imposter’ and ‘Man on Wire’ have been among my favourite films of the last ten years. Brilliantly made documentaries that push the boundaries of traditional doc filmmaking. No doubt at some point all of these will be made into movies (‘Man on Wire’ already has), but you just know they will not be anywhere near as good as the real story.

Who do you think will enjoy the movie you have directed?

Anyone who loves cinema will enjoy my film. Although it is about a very specific period in Ireland’s film making history, at heart it is the story of a maverick and a bunch of like-minded people who made movies against the odds. It is an underdog story as well as a story about cinema. Only a handful of Corman’s Irish crew had any movie making experience when they began and yet they made a full feature film every three months. Their work ethic was astonishing. Anyone with an interest in the art of low budget filmmaking or a fascination with kitsch B movies should find this film entertaining.

What other films at the festival are you looking forward to seeing?

There is a very strong line up this year and being a film fan I’m really looking forward to seeing the documentary about Roger Ebert, ‘Life Itself’. I’m also keen to see ‘Showrunners’ as Des Doyle has managed to secure an amazing line up of interviewees and I know how hard that can be. I’ve already seen ‘Blood Fruit’ which I really enjoyed and the documentary on Whitey Bulger looks fascinating.

It Came From Connemara!!

It Came from Connemara!! will have its Irish premiere at IFI Stranger Than Fiction on Saturday, September 27th at 10.00pm. Brian will take part in Q&A following the film (book here).

Calling all IFI Explorers!

Three generations of Lithuanian Cinema during the IFI Lithuanian Film Focus

IFI Head of Programming Michael Hayden discusses the career of Bruce Dern to coincide with a focus on his work and his new film, Nebraska

Kasandra O’Connell, Head of the IFI Irish Film Archive, talks about erotic films from the archives as we launch the first of three months of seasons dedicated to excess, presenting examples of how cinema has taken on sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. January focuses on sex on film.

Adrian Wootton explains the background to his upcoming illustrated talk, The Rolling Stones on Screen 1963 - 2012, on March 4th

Experimental Film Club presents 'The Train, The Cinema'

Article 0

IFI Librarian Fiona Rigney highlights some additional resources about filmmaking available at the IFI Library

Not Just in Black and White – 5 Complex Irish Clergymen from Film History as chosen by the IFI Irish Film Archive's Tiernan MacBride Library.

IFI Announces winner of the inaugural Pete Walsh Critical Writing Award

To coincide with the presentation of States of Fear to mark its 15th anniversary, the Tiernan MacBride Library looks at other documentaries which caused controversy in Ireland

Cannes Film Festival 2014 (Part One)

Cannes Film Festival 2014 (Part Two)

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Filming the Unfilmable

The Female Gaze: Heroines of Irish Cinema Portrayed by its Female Directors

Snakes and Ladders (1996)

Clare sa Spéir (2001)

32A (2007)

Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey

Behind the scenes at the IFI Irish Film Archive

Researching at the IFI Irish Film Archive... and 10 Tips for Ph.D. Researchers!

Evan Horan blogs for the IFI from Venice Days as part of 28 Times Cinema

Love is All director Kim Longinotto talks about the making of her documentary ahead of its premiere at IFI Stranger Than Fiction on Sept 27th

Article 0