Irish Film Institute
IFI Archive
Player

IFI Irish Film Archive

Portrait of Dublin

Year1952 Duration16m 46s ProducerDepartment of Foreign Affairs
This short film was made by filmmaker (later archivist) Liam Ó Laoghaire (aka Liam O’Leary) and was commissioned by the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of External Affairs. The film was designed to promote the city of Dublin to its inhabitants and to potential visitors from abroad. Brendan Stafford’s crisp black and white cinematography serves the city’s elegant architecture well while the narrator tells of the city’s cultural, literary and architectural history and its many venerable inhabitants. The elegant Georgian squares, the bustling markets, the tranquil parks and the sparkling nightlife present a city that is vibrant, cultured and steeped in history.

You may also like

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.

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.

14m 31s

Come Back to Erin - 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. Only one reel of this three-reel film has survived the ravages of time and so the tale is incomplete – but worth watching nonetheless. In this transatlantic tale, feisty young Peggy O’Malley (Gene Gauntier) refuses her father's orders to marry Jerry, the village blacksmith and runs away to New York City via steam-liner. Upon landing in New York she gets a job working as a parlour maid in the home of wealthy Mrs Mortimer. The film includes striking documentary-like elements in scenes set in Ireland – at the cattle market in Killarney and scenes of the emigrant ship leaving Queenstown (now Cobh) for America. This is all that survives of the film. Contemporaneous reviews fill in the remaining story : It’s not long before Peggy falls into a bad crowd and soon finds herself arrested for a crime she didn’t commit. With the news of Peggy’s arrest having made its way back home, will her blacksmith in shining armour come to save her from her wrongful imprisonment and take her back to Ireland? A single reel of this 3 reel film was discovered in the Museum of Modern Art following research by IFI in preparation for a major retrospective of Irish cinema in MOMA in 2011.

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.

5m 15s

Wonderful Western Islanders - 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. This short documentary depicts the lives of the inhabitants of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway in 1924. This short film, made about ten years before Flaherty’s epic Man of Aran, is probably the earliest surviving film of the islands. It presents a multi-faceted portrait of island life showing locals going about their daily routines: cattle are tied to a curragh and rowed out to a waiting steamship; islanders are photographed by visitors to the island; island men participate in the game of stone throwing (ag caitheamh cloch nirt). A breath-taking sequence shows 4 islandmen roped together and scaling a rugged cliff face. These men were known as cliffmen and may have been trying to catch birds or steal their eggs. While elders are busy battling the elements and rural life, some children express delight at the visiting camera. Aran historian Dr. Deirdre Ni Chonghaile has identified sequences on all three of the Aran Islands Inis Meáin, Inis Oírr and Inis Mór.

3m 53s

Irish Republic Proclaimed

This newsreel shows enthusiastic celebrations on the streets of Dublin as legislation creating the Irish Republic is passed. On 18th April 1949, The Republic of Ireland Act came into force. It declared that Ireland may officially be described as the Republic of Ireland and that the President of Ireland had the executive authority of the state in its external relations. This momentous event in Irish history is documented in this newsreel from with a collection of dignitaries including President Seán T O’Kelly and his wife, Lord Mayor of Dublin John Breen, Maud Gonne and Éamon de Valera, arriving at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral Dublin, for the ceremony. Crowds of people gather on O’Connell Street as the Irish Republic flag is hoisted and a salute is fired on top of the GPO. Celebrations continue as the Irish Army march by, along with Irish pipers, howitzers and armoured cars. 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.