APROBACION DEL PRESUPUESTO, PARA GASTOS DEL AÑO 2010

4 See FALUDI SUSAN (1999) ‘Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modem Man.’ London. Chatto &

Windus. PLECK J.H.(1981) ‘The Myth o f Masculinity.’ Cambridge.Mass.IMIT Press. CONNELL.R.W. (1987) ‘Gender & Power’. Cambridge. Olity.

5 FERRTTERDIARMAID. (2004) notes that ‘In the years 1985-6, over 30,000 emigrated, and

between 1983 and 1988 there was a net outflow o f 130,000’.p 672

6Drinking Crude features the screen debut o f Colin Farrell, who within five years was to become the most famous Irish actor o f his generation.

7 Information accessed at URL:

httD://filmforce.ign.com/articles/302/302383p 1 .html?fromint~1 (Accessed 12/03/04) s Information accessed at URL: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2004/NTRMS.php (Accessed 05/04/04)

9 Liz G IL L ’s Goldfish Memories (2003) attem pts a sim ilar approach.

10 The articles in question were: TURAN. KENNETH. (1998) ‘The Film Industry’s Lust for

the Grim Precludes the Good’. Accessed at URL:

http://www.boundless.org/1999/departments/atplav/a0000072.html (Accessed 23/10/03). and DARG1S. MANOHLA. (1998) ‘Whatever. The New Nihilism’.

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/99/0l/film-dargis.php (Accessed 23/10/03)

11OSCARS: Best Supporting Actor- Djimon Hounsou, Best Actress - Samantha Morton and Original Screenplay - Jim, Naomi and Kirsten Sheridan.

GOLDEN GLOBES: Best Screenplay and Best Song - Time Enough for Tears - Written by Bono, Gavin Friday and the Man Seezer and sung by Andrea Corn

12 Figures accessed at URL: http://www.the-nunibers.com/movies/2Q03/lNAMR.php

(Accessed 29/10/04)

13 The Instability of the National.’ In ASHBY, JUSTINE & HIGSON ANDREW. (Eds)

‘British Cinema, Past and Present.’ Routledge. London and New York. HIGSON cites My Beautiful Launderette (Stephen Frears, 1985), Bhaji on the Beach (Gurinder Chadha, 1993),

Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1995) and My Name is Joe (Ken Loach, 1998) pp37-38

14 Quotation obtained at URL:

http J!www. i fin. ie/ncws/index3 .htm?fuseaction-gctbody& file=2074 (Accessed 12/02/03)

15 See MERRm'.STEPHANIE. (2003) ‘The Observer’ ‘Review Section’. ‘In the Pain of the

Father'. October 12* p8. ILLEY. CHR1SSEY. (2003) ‘The Sunday Times’ Magazine Section. October 12Wl.p59. BARTON.RUTH. (2002) ‘Jim Sheridan. Framing the Nation.’ Contemporary Irish Film Makers Series. The Liffey Press pl45.

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS

I began this thesis by announcing my intentions to examine the ‘interstices’ referred to by Higgins, Bhabha and M cLoone am ongst others — the unactualised spaces provided by the clash between modernity and tradition — with a view to discovering new signs o f Irish identity in a selection o f films produced by the second Irish Film Board. My aim was to focus n o t only on the films themselves, bu t to adopt Richard J o h n so n ’s approach to cultural studies and observe these films in relation to the; ‘circuit o f the production, circulation and consum ption o f cultural products7 (1987: 46). This entailed consideration o f the constraints placed on film-makers in a climate w here the balance o f commercial concerns with artistic considerations tipped ever m ore toward the former, at a time w hen Irish society was one o f the fastest grow ing economies in the w orld and Hollywood mainstream cinema was at its m ost dominant. I undertook to examine the lack o f social criticism in recent Irish films, the im pact o f global recognition on the Irish industry, the concept o f ‘Third Cinema’ in relation to Irish production practices, a num ber o f different strategies which our film-makers have adopted in an attem pt to find ‘space in the market place* and the critical issue o f G ibb o n ’s ‘approved’ and ‘unapproved roads'* (1996:180) — the contem porary tendency o f critics and com m entators to revile those films which dwell on the themes and tropes com m on to the ‘First W ave’ film-makers because they see them as being regressive.

In such a broad undertaking it is inevitable that certain aspects o f the debate about contem porary Irish cinema are going to suffer due to lack o f space. T h e films o f our female directors - Pat M urphy, Vivienne D ick, Geraldine Creed, Aishling W alsh, Liz Gill, Kirsten Sheridan - are under-represented throughout this dissertation, as is the debate about representations o f N orthern Ireland. Given the regularity with which ‘Third Cinema’ is referred to, I am also aware that the whole area o f the D V film-

making revolution and the Film Board’s ‘m icro-budget’ productions w eren’t touched upon. But I hope that my readings have managed to shed some m ore light on the ‘liminal spaces and interstices w here the local meets the global’ (M cLoone, 2000:125).

It is interesting to note the dictionary definition o f the w ord ‘interstice’ refers to it as ‘a small space’.1 As dom inant Hollyw ood cinema continues to refine the financially lucrative generic conventions available to Irish film-makers, these spaces w ould appear to be becom ing even smaller. Ten years after the re-establishm ent o f a Film B oard which has produced on average eleven feature films a year since its inception, Irish film-makers may have gained sufficient experience to becom e m ore adept in their attempts at achieving Nowell-Smith’s ‘complex symbiosis5 in terms o f Irish versus cosm opolitan identity politics and they have certainly im proved their technical abilities o n all fronts due to the

availability o f regular w ork in the mid to late 90s. They have also established connections in the marketplace with European and American co-producers and Irish as an ethnicity, as pointed out by Negra, is m ore popular than it has ever been in A merican popular culture. Ironically, this is all happening at a time w hen anachronistic union practices, an over-priced labour force and an inflated econom y are driving foreign productions to locations outside o f th e republic such as Eastern Europe, the Isle o f Man and indeed N orthern Ireland, to avail o f cheaper film crews, extra funding sources for productions, advantageous tax breaks and a lower cost o f living. B ut the primary problem with recent Irish film has been the narrow parameters within which it operates. K iberd notes in relation to ou r 20th century writers;

the breakneck speed o f change in society gave added force to the concept o f “generation”, and the gap which had always separated fathers from sons grew so wide as to suggest that the young and old inhabited totally different countries. For the first tim e in history, perhaps, writers found themselves forced to write solely for their own immediate generation (1996: 382).

Such is the case with many o f our contem porary film-makers. In their determ ination to break free from the traditions o f mainstream Irish cinema and tell their ow n stories, many o f them have also jettisoned the encoded familiarity, warmth and communal emotions and morals associated with such cinematic traditions, and struggle to find something to replace them with. As K iberd reflects;

to a modernist generation intent on making things new, the fact o f fatherhood was an encumbrance and an embarrassment. The emerging hero was self-created like

Jay Gatsby, who sprang from some Platonic conception o f himself, or an orphan o f indeterminate background, or a slayer o f fathers (ibid).

‘Jay Gatsby* style characters are now the norm in contem porary Irish features, young m en and w om en defined by their consum erist tastes and their desire, like Christie in In America, n o t to be different, to be like everybody else. Via the ‘unbroken circuit5 we can

acgue that such characters are illustrative o f middle class social norm s in m o d em Ireland, reflecting a general desire to belong to a global m etropolis as o pposed to a global village.

However, as G ibbons notes;

the need to address the other, and the route o f the diaspora, is invariably presented as a passage from the margins to the m etropolitan centre, but the reverse journey is rarely greeted with much enthusiasm. In fact, those who go in the opposite direction are invariably derided as ‘going native’, as slumming it when they should really be getting on with the business o f persuading the natives to adopt their m aster’s voice. Yet it is only when hybridity becomes truly reciprocal rather than hierarchical that the encounter with the culture o f the colonizer ceases to be detrimental to one’s development (1996: 180).

The lack o f output on behalf o f our ‘First W ave’ film-makers over the last decade and the increasing difficulty in raising funding for projects which choose the ‘unapproved’ roads w ould suggest that Irish film still has a long way to go before reaching this stage. W riting sixty years ago, Liam O ’Laoghaire, reflecting on the possibilities for an Irish film industiy, made the p o in t that;

if we think o f French cinema, how it has gone to the towns and villages and cities for its themes, how it has explored the historic past and drawn its strength from a real and deep understanding o f the people, we see at once w hat is open to us

(1945:169).

Today, French cinema is still com prised o f a body o f w ork that can incorporate Francois O zon and Catherine Breillat’s provocative adult dramas, the gentle, feel-good rural nostalgia o f Christophe Barratier’s Les Choristes (2004) and Nicolas Philibert’s Eire et A voir (2002), the ‘Third Cinema’ o f Oliver Assayas and Tony G atlif and the mainstream

experimentation o f Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Yes, the French governm ent has a protectionist policy towards its cinema that puts the rest o f E urope to shame, b u t that does n o t account for the fact that such diversity has failed to materialise in the Irish canon. Alan Cilsenan, one o f the only directors w e have w ho is w orking primarily in the avant-garde arthouse tradition, argues that; ‘there is a danger o f everybody playing too safe, where the great desire to have hits comes at the expense o f individual creative thinking and people can be enam oured with the idea o f a jet-set existence’^ As the space in the market-place becomes m ore and m ore crowded, this practice of playing the odds will inevitably lead to

a policy o f diminishing returns in terms o f experimentation.. Fredric James stated in a recent interview;

I tell my Japanese friends that their whole economic m iracle squashed everything for a long tim e because people who are enormously prosperous end up making not very interesting movies or art o f any kind. N ow that they’ve gone into depression it m ight be a good tim e for them artistically.3

Perhaps this is the case with Ireland, and it is only w hen the disruption generated by the ‘Celtic Tiger’ phenom enon has had a chance to settle and normalise that the next decade will see th e film industry’s potential finally com ing to fruition.

E N D N O T E S

1 Interstice /in ’tuhstis/ noun formal a small space between adjacent things. [French interstice from late Latin interstitium, from Latin intersistere to stand still in the middle, from INTER + sistere to stand} Taken from The Penguin English Dictionary.

2 Ci led h i ANDREWS. RACHEL (2003) “The Irish Film Industry: lights, action... CUT!" In The

Sunday Tribune. Dublin: Tribune Papers 29th June, p 12/13.

3 JAMESON. FREDRIC. (2003) Interviewed by KING. NOEL In 'Critical Quarterly ' Volume 45 Issue