IFI Irish Film Archive

Reflections - Ireland

Year1977 Duration21m 00s DirectorPatrick Carey

Reflections – Ireland is a stunning, non-narrated tourist film with accompanying music by Paddy Moloney and The Chieftains. Many of Paddy Carey films depict a scarcity of civilisation, an untouched landscape, but here he treats the viewer to the beauties of landscape interwoven with a vivid tapestry of human activity: anglers in a lively river; bird-watchers at work; sheep farmers; horse riders; seaweed gatherers. A nighttime sequence shows people gathering in an unidentified village for music in a cosy pub. This film is part of The Patrick Carey Collection.

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.

16m 00s

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.

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.

25m 00s

Waves

Waves is a visually breathtaking film about the power of the sea. Capturing the Atlantic Ocean in various moods as it crashes against the Irish coasts, the film is a hymn to the relentless power and endless beauty of this elemental force of nature. With coastal scenes harking back to the majesty of Flaherty’s Man of Aran (1934), Carey offers a unique sea-centred depiction of the islands as his painterly cinematography offers mesmerising images of roiling seas, waves crashing against the Aran rocks, sunsets and a golden full moon. John Taylor, friend and colleague of Carey, had originally worked on Man of Aran and filmed some of the additional photography in Waves. This film is part of The Patrick Carey Collection.

15m 00s

Mists of Time

Mists of Time is a poetic, visual portrait of the mythology surrounding Ireland’s megalithic tombs and standing stones. The monumental dolmen and passage graves of Ireland, once burial grounds from the Late Stone Age, are depicted alongside tales of the pagan Halloween festival, Samhain. Dramatic cinematography depicting sunsets and tombs at the Burren, Country Clare, and Newgrange, County Meath (Ireland’s best-known passage grave) is underscored by the music of Brian Boydell. This film is part of The Patrick Carey Collection.

3m 39s

Wonderful Western Islanders

This short documentary depicts the lives of the inhabitants of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway in 1924. The opening title notes: ‘Remote from civilisation, unique in custom, these hardy Arran (sic) islanders eke out an existence from barren and rock-bound soil’. 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; rowing 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. 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. Aran historian Dr Deirdre Ni Chonghaile has identified sequences on all three of the Aran Islands Inis Meáin, Inis Oírr and Inis Mór.