Women in Focus

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1m 04s

Women in Focus

Women in Focus is a curated selection of films by five wildly independent female amateur filmmakers: Margaret Currivan; Agnes Heron; Flora Kerrigan; Beres Laidlaw; and Sister Maureen MacMahon.   Women's creative work has been under-reported and under-recognised and can be challenging to catalogue due to a lack of recorded primary information. This is exacerbated when dealing with amateur or non-professional filmmaking, where the work of individual women filmmakers has been even more invisible. In 2021, the IFI Film Archive acknowledged a limitation in the IFI Film Archive research resources and put a request out to academic partners to assist in developing new tools that would highlight the work of female filmmakers within the collection. This resulted in a collaborative research project  that developed new approaches to cataloguing the creative contribution of women filmmakers in local, regional, and national archives.  Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Irish Research Council, as part of the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities scheme, the project is a UK-Ireland collaboration between the University of East Anglia, Maynooth University, and the University of Sussex, with the IFI Irish Film Archive and East Anglian Film Archive as archive partners.  The project has resulted in the creation of a cataloguing toolkit that helps archives with moving image collections to create clear, relevant, and easily accessible records about female filmmakers. The work presented here formed case studies for the toolkit and was digitised by the IFI Irish Film Archive.  A larger selection of films from the project will be made available on the IFI Archive Player in 2025.

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9m 04s

Up the Canal

This short film explores how the Grand Canal in Dublin has changed over the years. The voiceover provided by Irish novelist, short story writer and humourist John D. Sheridan, notes how methods of transport have changed and how fewer boats and barges now use the waterway. The aural memories are illustrated by poetic footage of the canal in the 1960s. The director, Margaret Currivan, won first prize for Up the Canal in the 'Film Shows Cup’ at the 1961 Dublin Amateur Cine Society competition (a competition predominantly entered by male filmmakers at the time). Margaret Currivan (b. 1923) was an avid amateur filmmaker, most prolific from 1954 to 1966. Currivan had a keen interest in photography and co-owned Currivan's Photographic Services in Dublin with her husband, Patrick Joseph (PJ). The shop processed and sold film, projectors, cameras and equipment and the filmmaker would, therefore, have had access to equipment, supplies and quick processing. Her films chronicle the story of her family, PJ and children Helen, Dan, and Paddy, engaged in key events including birthdays, Christmases and holidays. Currivan sometimes appears in her films, alluding to partial recording made by PJ. However, the shots are few and authorship is retained by Currivan who is noted to have also meticulously edited her films using a manual reel-to-reel device and splicer.

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13m 02s

Roll 21: Achill, 1969

Roll 21: Achill, 1969 is a visually engaging film which depicts scenery and panoramas of Achill Island, County Mayo. Cinematic footage of waterfalls, forests, cliffs, fishermen on a beach, and a 1960s church near Letterfrack, County Galway, are included. The filmmaker's keen interest in framing and narrative techniques is evident. Shots of a friend driving her car through picturesque landscapes are later followed by similar views, this time filmed from inside of the car. Agnes Heron (d. 2002), born in Glasgow, Scotland, lived and worked in Dublin for most of her life. She was a chartered accountant and a partner in an electrical contract firm on Abbey Street until the 1970s. She was a skilled embroider, having possibly learnt the craft of embroidery from former Taoiseach Charles Haughey's mother, Sarah McWilliams Haughey. Very little is known about Heron’s life but, from her films, we can see her role as documentarian of numerous community and religious events in Ireland. Heron died in Dublin in her 80’s in 2002.

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4m 28s

The Seventh Day (silent)

The Seventh Day is a stop-motion animation depicting the dawn of time in the Big Bang and the gradual evolution of the concept of time, through images of hourglasses, clock faces and time-based mechanisms like cogs and pulleys. Eventually, time becomes so omnipotent that humans become time-based mechanisms themselves, harassed and harried across the screen by time’s fussy technology. Flora Kerrigan (b. 1940) was an active member of the Cork Cine Club during the late 1950s and 1960s and produced numerous Super8 shorts ranging from animation to documentary. Kerrigan’s films were recognised internationally, screened on RTÉ and won awards at prestigious amateur film competitions like ‘Ten Best’. The subject matter is often darkly comedic and hauntingly existential. Speaking to ‘The Cork Examiner’ in 1961, Kerrigan explained that “it takes almost 2,000 cut-outs for a two-minute cartoon … it’s work that requires infinite patience but it is very satisfying and less expensive than ordinary filmmaking.” Kerrigan’s filmmaking life appears to have ended when she moved to London in the late 1960s. However, she pursued a creative life, taking photographs, writing poetry, and becoming involved in activism.

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12m 42s

Roll 16 - Anne's third birthday, et al.

This silent amateur film captures family moments over several occasions, from airport greetings to birthday celebrations. Children and adults alike enjoy playing by a pond in a lush garden and a day out to Glendalough, County Wicklow, where everyone enjoys a picnic. The filmmaker, Beres Laidlaw, regularly documented her four daughters in home movies and travelogues. Beres Laidlaw (b. 1931) was a native of County Meath. In 1953, she married Thomas K. Laidlaw. Somerton House, their family home, and Georgian mansion with 130-acre estate in Castleknock, County Dublin, forms the backdrop to several of her films. The family's involvement in equestrian events and everyday life is depicted alongside overseas trips to Malaysia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Switzerland. The family sold Somerton House in the 1980s and Laidlaw retired to Balrath in County Meath. She died on 3rd December 2018.

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12m 28s

Kay

Kay is a short documentary that explores the artistic approach and paintings of Kay Lavelle, a sixth-year pupil at Sion Hill, one of Ireland's oldest all girls’ secondary schools in County Dublin. The film follows the student as she paints on Killiney strand with beachgoers and fishermen and at the school's art studio. Sister Maureen MacMahon, the filmmaker and Kay's teacher, created the work after her student returned from Germany dramatically affected by the adverse effects of the industrial revolution on the human psyche. Kay won the National Film Institute's Amateur Cine Competition in 1968. Sister Maureen MacMahon OP (b.1918) is an artist, writer, educator, filmmaker and Dominican nun. She entered the Dominican Order at Cabra, County Dublin, in 1936. MacMahon attended the National College of Art, Dublin, and received an ATC Certificate and Diploma in Art Education in 1970. She taught art in various local primary schools from 1947 to 1971. In the early 1970s, she worked as the Head of the Audio-Visual Department at Radharc, and later part-time lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin and St. Patrick’s Training College. MacMahon was part of the Black Raven Film Group, along with Owen Carton and Sean Brophy, which produced documentaries and educational films even winning the National Film Institute’s ‘Gevaert Perpetual Challenge’1st Place Trophy in 1967. In 2022, the Irish Film Institute held a public screening of MacMahon’s work, which she attended at the age of 104 years old.