Historical Dictionary of Irish Cinema (Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts)

433 Pages·2007·11.21 MB·English

by  Roderick Flynn

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Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts
Jon Woronoff, Series Editor
1. Science Fiction Literature, by Brian Stableford, 2004.
2. Hong Kong Cinema, by Lisa Odham Stokes, 2007.
3. American Radio Soap Operas,by Jim Cox, 2005.
4. Japanese Traditional Theatre,by Samuel L. Leiter, 2006.
5. Fantasy Literature,by Brian Stableford, 2005.
6. Australian and New Zealand Cinema, by Albert Moran and Errol
Vieth, 2006.
7. African-American Television, by Kathleen Fearn-Banks, 2006.
8. Lesbian Literature,by Meredith Miller, 2006.
9. Scandinavian Literature and Theater,by Jan Sjåvik, 2006.
10. British Radio,by Seán Street, 2006.
11. German Theater,by William Grange, 2006.
12. African American Cinema,by S. Torriano Berry and Venise Berry,
2006.
13. Sacred Music,by Joseph P. Swain, 2006.
14. Russian Theater, by Laurence Senelick, 2007.
15. French Cinema, by Dayna Oscherwitz and MaryEllen Higgins,
2007.
16. Postmodernist Literature and Theater, by Fran Mason, 2007.
17. Irish Cinema, by Roderick Flynn and Patrick Brereton, 2007.
18. Australian Radio and Television,by Albert Moran and Chris Keat-
ing, 2007.
19. Polish Cinema, by Marek Haltof, 2007.
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Historical Dictionary
of Irish Cinema
Roderick Flynn
Patrick Brereton
Historical Dictionaries of Literature
and the Arts, No. 17
The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
2007
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SCARECROWPRESS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Awholly owned subsidiary of
The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.scarecrowpress.com
Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom
Copyright©2007 by Roderick Flynn and Patrick Brereton
All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flynn, Roderick.
Historical dictionary of Irish cinema / Roderick Flynn, Patrick Brereton.
p. cm. — (Historical dictionaries of literature and the arts ; no. 17)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5557-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8108-5557-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Motion pictures—Ireland—Dictionaries. I. Brereton, Pat. II. Title.
PN1993.5.I85F695 2007
791.430941503—dc22 2007004289
(cid:2)™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
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Contents
Editor’s Foreword vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Acronyms and Abbreviations xv
Chronology xvii
Introduction xxiii
THE DICTIONARY 1
Bibliography 377
About the Authors 393
v
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Editor’s Foreword
For a relatively small country, Ireland has an impressively large
and dynamic film industry. This might very well not be the case,
however, had it not been for the efforts of countless actors, directors,
entrepreneurs, and—more recently—politicians. There has always
been an Irish passion for cinema (as there has been a passion for lit-
erature and theater), but the recent expansion might not have hap-
pened had the state not intervened to make Ireland an attractive and
lucrative production location. The result has been not only more but
often better films, and a shift from provincial subjects to those that
are more universal in nature and thus able to attract larger box-office
receipts and foreign audiences.
This progression in Irish cinema is related first in a chronology and
introduction, which trace over a century of history; a dictionary, with
several hundred entries on the pioneers and current leaders in the in-
dustry, actors and directors, authors, distributors and exhibitors, schools
and arts centers, government bodies and legislation, and above all the
films and recurrent themes; and a bibliography, to enable interested
readers to further explore any areas of particular interest. This Histori-
cal Dictionary of Irish Cinemais an excellent place to start and to come
back to periodically for further information.
Patrick (Pat) Brereton and Roderick (Roddy) Flynn are two spe-
cialists on Irish cinema who were born and educated largely in Ire-
land. At present, both are employed by the Dublin City University’s
School of Communications, where Dr. Brereton is a lecturer in film
and media studies and chair of the bachelor’s program in multimedia,
and Dr. Flynn is a lecturer and chair of the master’s program in film
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viii • EDITOR’S FOREWORD
and television. Both have written extensively not only on Irish cin-
ema but also on cinema more broadly. Areference book like this was
a new venture for them, but they have achieved a wonderful result—
a useful tool for their students and others, both at home and abroad.
Jon Woronoff
Series Editor
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Preface
This book’s objective is to allow readers with different levels of famil-
iarity to gain a multifaceted and comprehensive understanding of Irish
cinema. We have proceeded on the assumption that some readers will
be familiar only with large-scale international productions made in and
about Ireland and that some will be entirely unfamiliar with indigenous
(and in particular more recent) filmmaking and filmmakers in Ireland.
With that established, our core consideration in determining what to
include and exclude has been influenced by our central assumption of
what constitutes the film form. We have adopted the commonsense def-
inition of “a film”: a cinematic form that has dominated global screens
since World War I: live-action, fictional, feature-length films (usually
originating in Southern California but not included—for obvious
reasons—in this volume). Thus we have sought to catalogue instances
of this form emerging from Ireland since the turn of the 20th century.
Given that indigenous production did not begin to occur on a regular ba-
sis until the 1980s (and even then with sporadic gaps), the total output
of Irish filmmakers is still quite modest, perhaps no more than 200 fea-
ture films in total. Consequently, we have attempted to be fairly ex-
haustive in our coverage. Recognizing that many readers will associate
a number of “foreign” films with Ireland, we also discuss American,
British, and French films shot in Ireland in an attempt to situate indige-
nous films within a wider cultural context.
Our stress on fiction film, however, means that documentary film and
animation receive less attention. Although most of what little indige-
nous production that occurred in Ireland before 1970 was nonfiction,
the documentary form has subsequently migrated largely to television
and thus falls outside the scope of this book. In the case of feature-
length animation, Ireland has produced relatively little, compared to
live-action films. Nonetheless, we include substantial discussion of the
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