IFI Irish Film Archive

Páistí ag obair

Year1973 Duration10m 00s

Louis Marcus’s observational documentary Páistí ag Obair (Children at Work) watches children learning through play in Irish Montessori schools in the 1970s. A voiceover, in both Irish and English, explains the Montessori method which celebrates the importance of play in developing children’s potential. Children are seen in classrooms playing with Montessori materials which promote reasoning and judgement. These charming sequences are accompanied by jaunty jazz music from French flautist Raymond Guiot. The three schools featured in Páistí ag Obair are Tigh na nÓg, Blessington; St Kieran’s School, Bray; and The Children’s House, Stilllorgan. Páistí ag Obair is part of The Oscar® Collection: A Selection of Irish Academy Award® Nominated Short Films, along with another of Marcus’s documentaries Conquest of Light. It was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short in 1973.

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.

56m 45s

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.

17m 00s

Oisín

In Irish legend, Oisín, son of Celtic warrior Fionn Mac Cumhaill, was a warrior, a bard and a poet. This lyrical film opens with a quotation from Irish mythology where Oisín describes Irish birdsong as ‘the sweetest in the world’ and urges us to ‘stop and listen!’ What follows is a stunning, non-narrated depiction of Irish birds, animals and landscapes. Oisín was commissioned by the Department of Land of Ireland as a contribution to the European Conservation Year. Oisín is part of The Oscar® Collection: A Selection of Irish Academy Award® Nominated Short Films It was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short in 1971. This film is part of The Patrick Carey Collection.

10m 00s

Late Afternoon

In this delicately rendered animation, Emily, an elderly woman with dementia, vividly relives her memories. Sitting comfortably in her armchair Emily (voiced by Fionnula Flanagan) takes a cup of tea and a biscuit when a simple mishap triggers a pleasant journey into the past. She swims through the memories of being a child on a beach, a young woman in a lover’s embrace and a young mother concerned for her little girl. Inspired by writer/director Louise Bagnall’s two grandmothers, this is a poignant celebration of ordinary lives. Late Afternoon is part of The Oscar® Collection: A Selection of Irish Academy Award® Nominated Short Films. It was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Animated Short Film in 2019. A complementary behind-the-scenes video of Late Afternoon is also available as part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women.

14m 00s

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.

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.