Preserving Ireland's film heritage - Irish Film Archive

Contemporary Review, Feb, 2003 by Elizabeth Bruce

For ten months I was a volunteer intern at the Irish Film Archive, an affiliate of the Film Institute of Ireland. Located in Dublin's lively cultural centre, Temple Bar, the Irish Film Archive is the national body with responsibility for the acquisition and preservation of, and provision of access to, Ireland's film and audio-visual heritage. This includes both fictional and non-fictional films made in and about Ireland by Irish directors, or by non-Irish directors about Ireland. I would like to share what I have learnt in the hope that the support of institutions such as the Irish Film Archive might someday accord with the true worth of the work that they do.

Conservation of Irish film is important as it ensures a lasting and unique record of Irish heritage. This preservation issue is not merely of local concern. The Republic of Ireland's struggle for its national identity and independence gives its cultural works, such as film, a popularity in countries who have known similar experiences. Most film material housed at the Irish Film Archive is in English, and is therefore accessible to all English speaking countries and people. Furthermore it appeals to people of Irish descent spread throughout the world. Ireland's film heritage therefore strikes a chord with a multitude of film-goers, as well as the historically and politically minded, across a broad spectrum of nationalities. A key function of the Irish Film Archive is to lend Irish films free of charge to non-competitive film festivals throughout the world to cater for the international demand for and interest in Irish film.

Irish films go back to the beginning of film itself. However, more Irish feature length films were made in the 1980s and 1990s, than in all previous decades of the twentieth century. These two decades were a period in which Irish films constituted, in the words of one expert, 'a remarkable synthesis of Ireland's renowned literary heritage and thespian stagecraft' (Michael Gray's introduction to Stills, Reels, and Rushes. Blackhall Publishing. 1999). This included film versions of works such as James Joyce's Ulysses, the plays of Samuel Beckett and Roddy Doyle's contemporary novels, The Commitments and The Snapper. With these late twentieth century productions the medium of film provided a new platform for Irish writing which echoed the resurgence of interest in traditional Gaelic culture through Irish literature during the Irish Literary Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Headed by Irish playwrights and writers such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge and Will iam Butler Yeats, this revival gave Ireland a place in world drama disproportionate to the county's size. It is also a contributory reason why, despite its birthplace being a small island at the edge of Europe, Irish film is able to perform the great logistical feat of capturing the attention of people from not only English speaking nations such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada but also places such as India, Sweden and Japan among many others.

The role of the Irish Film Archive in facilitating and developing this interest is clear. As well as supplying copies of Irish film in response to requests from both national and international film festivals organisers, the Irish Film Archive is a useful resource for students, researchers and well established filmmakers alike, coming from countries as diverse as Poland and the United States. It has a huge collection of approximately 17,000 cans, 3000 beta tapes and diverse VHS material (housed on-site in custom built, climate-controlled vaults) that provide a record for present and future generations of not only Irish feature films from the earliest days of the nitrate silver screen, but also amateur footage of everyday Irish life past and present: from a day out at the races in 1960s' fashion to a poor harvest, religious ceremonies, sporting events and disappearing craft-making; and material from Irish television including cultural affairs programmes, thought-provoking documentaries and recent Irish TV serie s.

The Irish Film Archive's holdings also include a paper archive with documents relating to Irish film, for example papers from Lord Killanin, producer of the 1957 classic The Rising of the Moon; antique film equipment; and the Tieman McBride Film Library, the only library of its kind in the country, which boasts an inclusive collection of film journals, periodicals and reviews of Irish film plus films stills and posters as well as a vast collection of text and reference books. Databases with information relating to the above are another feature of the Irish Film Archive. Filmographic records of material housed in the archives with detailed entries describing a film reel's contents with regards to genre, length, location, production credits, cast and plot synopsis and technical records which detail the physical state of individual film reels are meticulously created by trained archivists. While most records held on the Irish Film Archive databases are at present only accessible to staff at the Archive dealing w ith individual queries and requests from researchers, production companies and members of the public, the transference to public record is an ongoing project at the Archive. Records already available to the public include those for the Irish language newsreels, Amharc Eireann (Look at Ireland) 1956 to 1964 and the films made by the Irish Film Institute (precursor to the Film Institute of Ireland) of the All Ireland Championship Hurling Finals 1949 to 1968, as well as some of the more prominent films held in the Archive.