IFI Irish Film Archive
Goodness
Duration1m 00s
An advert featuring a colourful kaleidoscope of images of the harvesting and processing of ingredients used in the brewing of Guinness.
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Island
The Irish-speaking customers of an isolated pub on a remote western island wait patiently for a delivery of Guinness, until finally the keg-filled currach is spotted. This well-known advert won a Clio award in New York for Arks Advertising in 1978, a Silver Cannes Lion and further awards from the Advertising Awards Festival, ICAD and Rank Screen Awards. Subtitles kindly provided by Báirbre Dolan and Saidhbh Ní Dhúlaing.
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.
Missing Green
A solitary woman walks through the eerie night-time landscape of Dublin’s Cork Street, a street once quiet and residential, now a four-laned artery for city traffic. Cork Street, as described by the narrators Councillor John Gallagher, architect Gerry Cahill, journalist Frank McDonald and sociologist Aileen O’Gorman, used to be a much better place to live than it is today. Gone are the days when people could easily cross the road to visit neighbours or children could safely play on the street. Urban planners carved out this four-laned artery to connect the city with its outlying suburbs. Furthermore, a decision to fence off open spaces in an attempt to prevent anti-social behaviour , succeeded only in promoting social isolation for the residents who still call Cork Street home. The isolation is embodied in the character of a young woman (actor Niamh Algar, nominated for a BAFTA for 2019’s Calm with Horses) who walks through the deserted urban landscape as memories are narrated which no longer match the present-day surroundings. This film is part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women.
The Polish Language
The Polish Language is a film-poem which brings an original poem by Alice Lyons to life through the medium of film. The imagery in this poem is activated in imaginative ways through various styles of animation, employing hand-drawn, stop-motion, and time lapse techniques. The typography - the style, arrangement and appearance of the letters and words of the poem - is a central element in this film. The images, animations and graphics flow freely into each other mirroring the ebb and flow of the poem’s lines and verses. This striking imagery is combined with an array of sounds such as the whispering of Polish poetry, the sound of keys tapping on a keyboard and the repetitive, distinctive noise of flicking paper. When blended seamlessly together with a musical arrangement by Justin Spooner, these sounds and images reveal the complementary possibilities of poetry and film. This film is part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women.
Beara
An exploration of the wild desolation of West Cork, Beara is a landscape film featuring the unique flora and fauna of the Beara Peninsula off the coast of Cork. The film begins with a slow zoom in on the Beara Peninsula on a map of Ireland. What follows is a breathtaking depiction of nature. Raging waterfalls, stunning water reflections, turbulent waves, sea cliffs, bathing birds and nesting puffins form some of the striking imagery of this film. This film is part of The Patrick Carey Collection.
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.