IFI Irish Film Archive

First Communion - Father Delany Collection

Duration2m 08s

In this film, Father Delany captures a group of children dressed in their finest outfits, proudly walking down an inner city Dublin street on their way to First Holy Communion. A crowd gathers at the railings of the church to see the event and wave at the camera. Father Jack Delany (1906-1980) was ordained in 1930 at the age of 24 and served as a parish priest in Dublin in the 1930s and 1940s. He served mainly around Seán McDermott Street (then Gloucester Street), Rutland Street and Gardiner Street. His films offer a fascinating glimpse of life at the time in inner-city Dublin and include scenes of trips with parishioners, tenement life, school children at play, religious processions, and residents of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity Convent (which housed a Magdalene Laundry). With kind permission of Irene Devitt.

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.

3m 17s

The Loopline Collection Featurette

Loopline Films is an independent production company established in 1992 by award-winning filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle. Since its foundation, Loopline has been at the heart of Irish independent broadcasting creating a wealth of important and diverse material on topics such as folklife, ethnology, architecture, art, literature and inner city life. The subjects explored by Loopline were chosen by Merry Doyle for their cultural and social importance. This first tranche of the Loopline Collection covers key areas of Irish history and arts, and contains a unique wealth of stunning images revealing everyday Irish society in urban settings. The focus of the filmmaker is on national identity in a changing world and Sé Merry Doyle set up Loopline Film with the specific intention of making creative documentaries that would endure and stand the test of time. The breadth of the collection is evident in the diversity of its content: The Folklife footage captures the last living moments of many traditional rural ways of life before mass production and consumerism led to their demise. The material covers traditional farming methods, boatbuilding, weaving, fishing, thatching, wheelwright, and spiritual customs. The collection contains a large quantity of urban material that chronicles the changing landscape of Dublin, its buildings and its citizen’s ways of life. The films include such historically resonant images as the clearance of slums, the closure of traditional markets, and tragic accounts of young teenagers dying from the heroin epidemic of the early 90’s. Portraits of artists, architects, writers and poets are also a cornerstone of the collection with riveting interviews with the very best artistic talent in the country. Patrick Kavanagh, John Montague, Hugh Leonard, James Gandon, Jennifer Johnston, Doris Lessing, John Henry Foley, Eavan Boland, Brendan Kennelly and Joseph O’Connor are but a fraction of those featured.

11m 00s

Rúbaí

‘God is everywhere, Rúbaí. Everyone knows that.’ – Despite her teacher’s declaration, eight-year-old Rúbaí challenges the existence of God in the days before her Holy Communion.  When Rúbaí continues to challenge her teacher and announces to the visiting priest  that she is an atheist, she provokes their frustration and leaves them speechless when she cites Charles Darwin as ‘a fella who makes sense’.  Enigmatic scenes of this solitary child purposefully digging in the garden are intercut with scenes of her reluctant preparations with her mother for the Communion Day. Her mother is impatient with her classroom defiance and  her preoccupation with evolution but ultimately understands what is driving her to behave this way.   This film won many awards including Best Short at the Babel Film Festival in Sardinia. This film is part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women.

4m 00s

The White Dress

An enigmatic tale of a young girl determined to participate in the ritual of First Holy Communion, even if she has to go it alone. A young girl wakes up in a grim flat, washes herself and dons a white dress, shoes and handbag. She completes her outfit with white ribbons stolen from a shop as she makes her way to the church, alone. Surrounded by other happy communicants and their families, she bravely participates in the ceremony and happily accepts a five euro note from a man in the church grounds. With great economy, Vanessa Gildea constructs a complex narrative reflecting upon child neglect; poverty; the power of long-held traditions of the Catholic Church and the determination of a young girl to be accepted by the community in the face of great odds. This film is part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women.

55m 00s

Dear Daughter - The Louis Lentin Collection

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.

2m 05s

Dublin Students Protest - 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. November 1961 and students from Trinity College marched the main streets of Dublin in protest at nuclear bomb testing. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, CND, was established in the UK in 1958 in the wake of widespread fear of conflict and the effects of nuclear testing. CND quickly grew with branches in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. This newsreel recorded Irish student protesters as they marched in Dublin from St. Stephens Green to the Ambassador Theatre on O’Connell Street. Their placards demanded 'Ban the Bomb' and called for world peace. Produced by Gael Linn, Amharc Éireann (A View of Ireland) is Ireland’s longest-running indigenous newsreel series. It was distributed to cinemas throughout the country to promote the Irish language. The first 36 issues were produced as single-topic films which were released monthly, followed in 1959 by weekly, multi-story newsreels featuring a broad range of topics, from hard news stories to lighter magazine-style items. Between 1956 and 1964, 267 editions of the newsreel were produced for cinema exhibition. With kind permission of Gael Linn.