Syllabus & Links
A short timeline of 20th and 21st c. Irish history: Irish 20thc Timeline
Useful Links:
Film Ireland Online magazine about Irish film industry
Irish Film Board (short films, trailers, etc.)
Galway Film Fleadh Site of the film festival we’ll be attending
Irish Film & TV Research Online
Come Here To Me A blog about Dublin culture including music, pubs, etc.
The Life of Stuff A useful website for all things Irish re: food, culture, travel, festivals, etc.
Top 50 Irish Films A decent ‘top’ list from the Independent, one of the larger Irish newspapers. Of the list, note that in the 1980s and early 1990s Irish filmmaking is dominated by two directors, Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan, and, in many cases, you’ll know of their films from their distribution in the US, awards, etc. These include films like My Left Foot (1989) and Michael Collins (1996). In the 2000s and beyond there is a bigger array of directors (still overwhelmingly male, and white), but one important name is Lenny Abrahamson who is now doing Hollywood films like Room (2016) but started with great Irish films like Adam and Paul (2004) and Garage (2007). A film not on this list which I really like is The Guard (2011), which stars the unlikely duo of Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle in a very weird buddy cop/fish out of water hybrid genre piece directed by John Michael McDonagh, who also did Calvary (2014), again with Gleeson.
Some films: