Centre for Cinema Studies - Research Projects
Irish Genres: Cinema and Society
From 2004-2008, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded Professor Brian McIlroy’s project entitled Irish Genres: Cinema and Society, 1981-2006.
Introduction:
This research project aimed to examine through the critical prism of genre theory and criticism the remarkable rise of Irish and Irish-related film production over these twenty-five years. 1981 was chosen as the start date because it was the birth of the first Irish Film Board, the key instance of concrete Governmental recognition that fiction film was an important cultural sector to be supported and valued. To put the spotlight on Ireland is a valuable enterprise within any small nation context. The research questioned to what degree Irish filmmakers had “gone Hollywood” and to what extent had they succeeded in maintaining cultural difference in the era of globalization. Not unlike Canadian cinema issues, the research sought to discover how a small English-speaking country can flourish culturally in the face of British and American cultural dominance.
Outcomes - Books:
The research was sparked by a previous book by Brian McIlroy , Shooting to Kill: Filmmaking and the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. (Richmond, B.C.:Steveston Press, 2001) which analysed the Irish troubles movie genre. This book is available for $39.95 CAN from the publisher. Email stpress@interchange.ubc.ca for details.
A Genre and Irish Cinema conference was held in March 2005 at UBC, and this event was the basis for Genre and Cinema: Ireland and Transnationalism, ed .Brian McIlroy (London and New York: Routledge 2007). This book is available at www.amazon.ca or www.amazon.com or
www.amazon.co.uk
Outcomes - Articles:
Various articles by Brian McIlroy were published on this topic during the research period, and in the interests of public access to government supported research, they are posted here, along with two reviews of the 2005 conference. Please acknowledge the initial publication venue if used.
- Conference Review
by Renée Penney
Click here to view article text - On ‘Genre’ And Semantic Quibbling: Or, There’s No Pleasing A Genre Critic
by Christine Evans
Click here to view article text - The Repression of Communities: Visual Representations of Northern Ireland during the Thatcher Years
[This version first published in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism., ed. Lester Friedman. Revised edition. London: Wallflower Press, 2006: 77-90]
by Brian McIlroy
Click here to view article text - Irish Horror: Neil Jordan and the Anglo-Irish Gothic
by Brian McIlroy
[First published in Horror International, eds. Steven Jay Schnieder and Tony Williams (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005): 128-140]
Click here to view article text - Exodus, Arrival & Return: The Generic Discourse of Irish Diasporic and Exilic Narrative Films
by Brian McIlroy
[First published in Keeping It Real: Irish Film and Television, eds. Ruth Barton and Harvey O’Brien (London: Wallflower Press, 2004): 69-77.]
Click here to view article text - Memory Work: Omagh and The Northern Irish Monumentary
by Brian McIlroy
[First published in Genre and Cinema: Ireland and Transnationalism, ed. Brian McIlroy (London and New York: Routledge, 2007): 261-272.
Click here to view article text - Hollywood East? A Cautionary Tale of Irish Film Distribution in North America
[First published in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 29: 2 (2003): 46-52]
by Brian McIlroy
Click here to view article text
Outcomes - Database:
Access to a Irish film genres database, is compiled by Jennie Carlsten, whose work has been supported by the SSHRC Grant.
Click here to visit the Irish Films Genres Database
