IFI Irish Film Archive
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.
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. ‘Who needs a pregnant waitress?’ is just one of the questions that fills Ellie Connolly’s mind when she discovers she is pregnant in 1980s Ireland. Statistic was made by film student Alison Kelly in 1983, the year which saw the passing of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution Act (which effectively criminalised abortion in most circumstances). Ellie (Edel McCrann) is pregnant as “the result of a drunken screw between two people who hardly knew each other”. She broods in her flat and discusses her predicament with her good friend Anne – she must tell her boyfriend Paul but she knows ’In the end it’s inside me, not him’. She finds information in a magazine about abortion services in the UK and Anne accompanies her to the ferry – following the footsteps of the many women before her. Statistic is invaluable as a contemporaneous response to events in 1983 – the film includes newspaper headlines and filmed sequences of pro and anti-abortion marches and dramatizes the plight of a young woman dealing with a crisis pregnancy. It is also a vivid record of the sights and sounds of Dublin in the 1980s - not least in the colourful cameos from mime artist Raymond Keane and indie band The Cuba Dares.
‘Who needs a pregnant waitress?’ is just one of the questions that fills Ellie Connolly’s mind when she discovers she is pregnant in 1980s Ireland. Statistic was made by film student Alison Kelly in 1983, the year which saw the passing of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution Act (which effectively criminalised abortion in most circumstances). Ellie (Edel McCrann) is pregnant as “the result of a drunken screw between two people who hardly knew each other”. She broods in her flat and discusses her predicament with her good friend Anne – she must tell her boyfriend Paul but she knows ’In the end it’s inside me, not him’. She finds information in a magazine about abortion services in the UK and Anne accompanies her to the ferry – following the footsteps of the many women before her. Statistic is invaluable as a contemporaneous response to events in 1983 – the film includes newspaper headlines and filmed sequences of pro and anti-abortion marches and dramatizes the plight of a young woman dealing with a crisis pregnancy. It is also a vivid record of the sights and sounds of Dublin in the 1980s - not least in the colourful cameos from mime artist Raymond Keane and indie band The Cuba Dares. This film is part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women.
‘The day I don’t know who you are, promise to take me swimming’ – a melancholic promise between a husband and wife as her Alzheimer’s disease progresses. When Thady (Barry Ward) returns to his parents’ home for a neighbour’s wake, he is shocked by his mother’s decline (Olwen Fouéré, also seen in The Wake). Gone is the eloquent artist of the television interviews, and here now is a woman who has lost her capacity to carry out the most mundane tasks and spends her days in a local care centre. When he finds the crumpled promise in the pocket of an old dressing gown, the rest of his visit is spent bitterly resenting his mother’s condition and his father’s stoic acceptance. It is only when his mother goes missing in the middle of the night that he begins to understand how their love transcends her condition. Director Claire Dix and writer Ailbhe Keogan have since collaborated on the feature film Sunlight. This film is part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women.
An advertisement for Valley Ice Cream, encouraging people to get their next ice cream pop from ‘the big red fridge’. Featuring all the favourites, including Choc Ice. Valley Ice Cream was based in Thurles, Co Tipperary, and closed in 1997.
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.