IFI Irish Film Archive
F.A. Cup
Duration42s
A comic advert in which two men (one of whom is a young Bill Nighy) ask a series of questions to a pet toucan.
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Statistic - Trish McAdam Filmmaker Playlist
Our second IFI Filmmaker Playlist is curated by filmmaker and visual artist Trish McAdam. Since the production of her early shorts in the 1980s, Trish has created a vibrant and varied body of work, embracing a range of forms and subjects and retaining a singular, independent voice. We're delighted to welcome Trish to the Irish Film Institute to select her top picks from films preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive and presented on the IFI Archive Player. ‘Who needs a pregnant waitress?’ is just one of the questions that fills Ellie Connolly’s mind when she discovers she is pregnant in 1980s Ireland. Statistic was made by film student Alison Kelly in 1983, the year which saw the passing of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution Act (which effectively criminalised abortion in most circumstances). Ellie (Edel McCrann) is pregnant as “the result of a drunken screw between two people who hardly knew each other”. She broods in her flat and discusses her predicament with her good friend Anne – she must tell her boyfriend Paul but she knows ’In the end it’s inside me, not him’. She finds information in a magazine about abortion services in the UK and Anne accompanies her to the ferry – following the footsteps of the many women before her. Statistic is invaluable as a contemporaneous response to events in 1983 – the film includes newspaper headlines and filmed sequences of pro and anti-abortion marches and dramatizes the plight of a young woman dealing with a crisis pregnancy. It is also a vivid record of the sights and sounds of Dublin in the 1980s - not least in the colourful cameos from mime artist Raymond Keane and indie band The Cuba Dares.
Statistic
‘Who needs a pregnant waitress?’ is just one of the questions that fills Ellie Connolly’s mind when she discovers she is pregnant in 1980s Ireland. Statistic was made by film student Alison Kelly in 1983, the year which saw the passing of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution Act (which effectively criminalised abortion in most circumstances). Ellie (Edel McCrann) is pregnant as “the result of a drunken screw between two people who hardly knew each other”. She broods in her flat and discusses her predicament with her good friend Anne – she must tell her boyfriend Paul but she knows ’In the end it’s inside me, not him’. She finds information in a magazine about abortion services in the UK and Anne accompanies her to the ferry – following the footsteps of the many women before her. Statistic is invaluable as a contemporaneous response to events in 1983 – the film includes newspaper headlines and filmed sequences of pro and anti-abortion marches and dramatizes the plight of a young woman dealing with a crisis pregnancy. It is also a vivid record of the sights and sounds of Dublin in the 1980s - not least in the colourful cameos from mime artist Raymond Keane and indie band The Cuba Dares. This film is part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women.
Dear Daughter - Trish McAdam Filmmaker Playlist
Our second IFI Filmmaker Playlist is curated by filmmaker and visual artist Trish McAdam. Since the production of her early shorts in the 1980s, Trish has created a vibrant and varied body of work, embracing a range of forms and subjects and retaining a singular, independent voice. We're delighted to welcome Trish to the Irish Film Institute to select her top picks from films preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive and presented on the IFI Archive Player. Dear Daughter was the first televised exposure of the horrific abuse of hundreds of children in Ireland’s industrial schools. Christine Buckley bravely recounts the extent of the atrocities she experienced as a child in Dublin’s Goldenbridge orphanage in this drama-documentary. Born in Dublin, she was the daughter of a married Irish woman and a Nigerian medical student. At the age of three weeks old she was given up to be fostered. Dear Daughter delves into her traumatic childhood at the orphanage and her persistent determination to find her parents. Dear Daughter was one of several television documentaries (including Lentin’s Stolen Lives (1999) and Mary Rafferty’s States of Fear (1999)) which heightened public awareness of institutional abuse, and lead to the commissioning of the Murphy and Ryan reports, which investigated the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin leading to a full State apology to victims of clerical child abuse by then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Dear Daughter was awarded the Creative Excellence Award at the US International Film and TV Festival 1996 and was nominated for Social and Political Documentary, Banff Television Festival, 1996. With kind permission of Dr. Ronit Lentin.
Bye Bye Now
Residents of rural Ireland reminisce on the joys and sorrows of phone boxes as they become obsolete in the modern world. When phone boxes were first introduced in Irish villages in the 1920s, there was stern competition between local businesses to have one installed outside their property. The phone box would assume a monumental role in many people’s lives allowing them to stay connected with loved ones and receive all sorts of important news. In Mayo, a couple celebrating their 50th anniversary credit the box for helping to keep their long-distance romance alive. In Donegal, a man laughingly recalls how two women became trapped inside one while trying to wait out a bad storm. A young man nervously calls a maternity hospital for news of his young wife. Although many of those interviewed admitted they do not use the service anymore, the phone box is a fondly remembered feature of Irish village life. This film is part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women.
J.G. Ballard - Imprint: Writer in Profile
In this episode, Theo Dorgan meets English novelist, short story writer and essayist J.G. Ballard to delve into his oeuvre of science fiction and post-apocalyptic novels, such as The Drowned World and Crash. Empire of the Sun is explored as an autobiographical account of a young British boy’s experience in Shanghai during Japanese occupation. Dorgan questions Ballard on the difference between personal and media-informed memory; on using his writing to challenge preconceptions about England and the process of adapting his work to film. Later, Ballard explores themes around law and order in society, the darker side of the human psyche, morality and his own vivid imagination. Imprint, a literature review programme, and its sister show Imprint: Writer in Profile screened on RTÉ1 for three seasons. Both were presented by Irish poet, writer and lecturer Theo Dorgan. Over the course of the Writer in Profile series Dorgan conducted extended, in-depth interviews with a wide range of Irish and international writers including Colm Tóibín, Bernard MacLaverty, Jennifer Johnston, Joseph O’Connor, Michael Longley, Doris Lessing, John Montague, Eavan Boland, Gore Vidal, Richard Ford and Margaret Atwood.
The Coming of the Black Dawn - The Roy Spence Collection
A young man travels to his uncle’s lonely castle to give him a rare tractate. His uncle enlists his help in summoning up the ancient demon Cthulu, using secret rites of Black Magic which involve grave-robbing and murder. As the demon is summoned, the young man fears the worst and is forced to make a life changing decision. Shooting locations like Helen’s Tower and Tulynakill graveyard along with a shrill atmospheric soundtrack makes for a haunting experience. Roy Spence is an award-winning amateur filmmaker. For the past 50 years, Spence has been making and screening a series of remarkable and sometimes eccentric films in his cinema in Comber, Co. Down. The films span many genres from sci-fi to horror to folk-life documentaries shot between 1965 and 1986. His collection of over 40 films (13 documentaries/non-fiction and 29 fiction feature films) is held and preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive.