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IFI Irish Film Archive

Ireland’s Holy Mount

Year1921 Duration54s
This footage captures a pilgrimage to Ireland’s Holy Mount, Croagh Patrick from 1921 where thousands of people toil over bog and boulders to reach the summit and pray for peace. Croagh Patrick is a 764 metre-high mountain and an important site of pilgrimage in County Mayo, Ireland. It is the third highest mountain in County Mayo after Mweelrea and Nephin and forms the southern part of a U-shaped valley created by a glacier flowing into Clew Bay in the last Ice Age. It is climbed by pilgrims on Reek Sunday every year, which is the last Sunday in July.

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20m 00s

Essie's Last Stand

It’s Dublin, 1999, and 76 year old Essie Keeling, Georgie her dog and her neighbour Karl Byrne are fighting eviction by property developers and homelessness. This timely, inspiring story of determination and resistance offers a crucial lens through which to view Dublin’s current housing crisis. Despite her age and ill health, the lovable Essie is a force to be reckoned with. She refuses an offer of one thousand pounds when asked to make way for the demolition and redevelopment of her home into luxury apartments. Gathering a mass of supporters, including Richard Boyd Barrett and Nell McCafferty, Essie and Karl make a stand that captures the public’s imagination and wins the heart of the audience. Don’t miss our exclusive clip below, where Loopline revisit Essie one year later. Director Liam McGrath has documented Irish society for over twenty years with a regular focus on Traveller Culture. He is known for the feature documentary Southpaw: The Francis Barrett Story (1998) and was winner of the 2015 Best Director Television IFTA for Dolores Keane: A Storm in the Heart.

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.

9m 35s

Housing Discrimination - 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. Shot in 1953, this film highlighted housing discrimination practiced by the unionist-controlled council in the town of Fintona in County Tyrone. It outlines the inequalities faced by the poorer, and usually nationalist, inhabitants, and details how new council houses are being given to unionist residents who are in less need of the houses than nationalists. It argues that the discrimination is motivated by the desire to maintain a majority of unionist voters in certain constituencies. Housing Discrimination was produced by the Information Division of the Irish Department of External Affairs (now the Department of Foreign Affairs) and was allegedly partly shot using a hidden camera. In 1954 it was distributed in Britain by the Anti-Partition League, which prompted the Northern Ireland provincial government to complain to the British government, asking it to lodge a complaint with the Irish government. The film is interesting for a number of reasons; its originator (effectively the Irish government), its subject matter (housing discrimination in Northern Ireland), its argument (discrimination represents a conspiracy against the people of Ireland by a ruling group acting in concert with the British government) and its language (virulently Irish nationalist and anti-British). With kind permission of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

11m 51s

Irish Co-operative Gathers Peat

In this 1920s newsreel, an Irish co-operative digs, stacks and gathers turf. It is an activity involving the whole community - even the local priest is involved in overseeing the sacks of turf loaded onto a barge before being transported by canal. The crew work tirelessly to load a barge. ‘Rathangan’ is inscribed on the side of the barge and a man waves an ‘Up Kildare’ flag in shot. The turf is possibly extracted from the Bog of Allen – a large, raised bogland stretching over 5 counties in Ireland. In the 19th and early 20th century, non-agriculturally viable bogland was Ireland’s primary indigenous fuel resource. It is estimated that 6 million tonnes of sod turf was produced in 1921. In Ireland today a focus has shifted to a more environment-friendly energy production and there has been an attempt to restore Irish boglands. This film is part of The Irish Independence Film Collection – The Early Irish Free State that explores facets of Irish society after the War of Independence and up to the birth of the Irish Republic.

1m 35s

Forgive and Forget

The formation of the Irish Free State “Recalling the King’s noble plea at Belfast for peace, a plea which has at last borne fruit”. This newsreel shows the royal progress from the Belfast docks, up High Street towards City Hall while Black and Tans occupy an armoured vehicle on Thomas Street. King George V used the opening of the Northern Ireland Parliament in June 1921 as an opportunity to appeal for peace, ´to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and forget´. The IRA agreed to a truce a fortnight later on July 11th 1921. This led to talks between the President of the Irish Republic Éamon de Valera and David Lloyd George, and later that year to formal negotiations between Dail Éireann representatives and the British government.

1m 07s

Further Pictures of Irish Peace

This newsreel depicts the immediate aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Peace Treaty on December 6th 1921, showing the release of 1,700 internees from Ballykinlar internment camp. In the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, November 21st 1920, the British authorities arrested hundreds of republicans and opened several internment camps throughout Ireland. The first internment camp was this one at Ballykinlar, in Co. Down, while the volume of arrests was so great that additional camps had to be established at Gormanstown, Co. Dublin; Bere Island and Spike Island, Co. Cork; and at the Curragh, in Co. Kildare. Opened in December 1920 Ballykinlar Camp was situated on the Co. Down coast at the mouth of Dundrum Bay, about three miles from Dundrum village between Downpatrick and Newcastle. Over the following year 2,000 men were interned at Ballykinlar.Three days later after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, on December 9th 1921, all Republican prisoners were released from Ballykinlar. Three special trains brought the men to Dublin, from where the internees made their own way to their home Counties. The trains were attacked by loyalist mobs with gunfire, bricks and stones at several locations. The Leinster Leader however on, December 17th 1921, reported on the release of the Ballykinlar and Curragh Camp internees, remarking that the reception in Athy was ‘a very warmhearted one’.