Irish film is enjoying a moment in the sun, our actors, directors and film creatives are internationally celebrated and greatly sought after, as was evident in the record breaking number of Irish nominations in the 2024 Academy Awards.
Although Ireland is recognized as punching above its weight in terms of our current cinematic achievements, making films professionally is something we have only been doing for a relatively short time.
Most other western nations embraced filmmaking soon after its introduction as a medium in the 1890s. However, despite some sporadic professional production over the first part of the twentieth century,
Ireland's film industry was only really established in 1980 with the formation of the first Irish Film Board. Prior to that a range of filmmakers across the spectrum that makes up amateur and non-professional filmmaking created their own works. Some as independent filmmakers shooting what we would recognize as traditional home movies, others working in cine clubs and cooperatives to make more technically crafted productions.
As a result, we have an extraordinary amount of amateur and noncommercial film material that provides an invaluable visual representation of our nation in the first part of the twentieth century; capturing activities, places and events that would otherwise be unrecorded.
The five female filmmakers that make up this collection, are as different as they are similar, both in the style and form of their filmmaking and in their personal circumstances.
My own interest in amateur filmmaking and the work of female filmmakers, two areas that are traditionally overlooked in terms of critical studies, led the IFI Irish Film Archive to partner on Women In Focus, a project that aims to highlight the importance of both areas of activity.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Irish Research Council (IRC), as part of the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities scheme, the project is a UK-Ireland collaboration between the University of East Anglia, Maynooth University, and the University of Sussex, with the IFI Irish Film Archive and East Anglian Film Archive as archive partners.
and seeks to give audiences an opportunity to experience the under-explored area
of amateur women's filmmaking'
The first part of this project culminated with the publication of a cataloguing toolkit that allows any archive with a moving image collection to create more effective, useful and accessible records about women or amateur filmmakers. The second part of the project enabled us to conduct workshops across the UK and Ireland, showing people how to use the toolkit and raising awareness of the importance of both amateur filmmaking and the work of women in this area.
The project also allowed us to develop case studies and digitise the work of five fascinating amateur filmmakers. As an introduction to the WIF project we have made a sample selection of films by these women available on the IFI Archive Player with the intention of publishing a more extensive collection in the near future.
This collection of films shows how diverse non-professional filmmaking can be, and seeks to give audiences an opportunity to experience the under-explored area of amateur women’s filmmaking. The five female filmmakers that make up this collection, are as different as they are similar, both in the style and form of their filmmaking and in their personal circumstances. They include Sister Maureen MacMahon, a nun and educator, Flora Kerrigan, an art school student, Margaret Currivan and Agnes Heron, two business women and Beres Laidlaw, a member of a prominent Anglo-Irish family.
Some of the women worked as individual practitioners while others were members of film clubs or formed creative partnerships. The work they produce ranges from documentary and experimental films to travelogues and traditional home-movies, giving us a wonderful insight into the variety of work that exists under the umbrella of the term "amateur".
In addition to making a sample collection of works digitized as part of the Women In Focus project available on the IFI Archive Player, Sarah Arnold and Kasandra O’Connell will be discussing the work of Dublin filmmaker Margaret Currivan as part of the Dublin Festival of History in the IFI Library on October 9th. The event is free but booking is essential - find out more here.
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