IRISH FILM and TELEVISION - 2013 the Year in Review Roddy Flynn, Tony Tracy (Eds.)
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Estudios Irlandeses , Number 9, 2014, pp. 208-237 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ AEDEI IRISH FILM AND TELEVISION - 2013 The Year in Review Roddy Flynn, Tony Tracy (eds.) Copyright (c) 2014 by the authors. This text may be archived and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, provided that the authors and journal are properly cited and no fee is charged for access. Irish Film and TV Review 2013. Introduction Roddy Flynn, Tony Tracy .................................................................................................. 209 The Concrete Manifestations of Emotional Eternity in Brendan Muldowney’s Love Eternal (2013) Barry Monaghan ................................................................................................................. 215 Pilgrim Hill (Gerard Barrett 2012) Laura Canning .................................................................................................................... 218 The Last Days on Mars (Ruari Robinson, 2013) Roddy Flynn ...................................................................................................................... 221 Amber, Screenworks and the production of culture Dennis Murphy ................................................................................................................... 223 I wanna destroy the passer by: Nihilism, Narcissism and Authority in Love/Hate Series Four Angela Nagle ...................................................................................................................... 227 New Voices in Irish Experimental Cinema Donal Foreman … .............................................................................................................. 230 ________________________ ISSN 1699-311X 209 Estudios Irlandeses , Number 9, 2014, pp. 209-214 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ AEDEI Split Screens: The Year in Review 2013 Roddy Flynn & Tony Tracy In seeking to get a handle on a year in the life of figure should have been €142m (rather than their a national audiovisual industry, its seems published €168m). practical to commence with some basic facts – It may well be that IBEC and the Irish Film how many projects were completed, at what cost Board simply adopted different bases for their and in what specific areas (i.e. film, television calculations and that the inconsistency in the and animation)? Time was, one could simply flip Board’s own figures is down to semantic through the pages of the annual review of screen distinctions between Irish expenditure and production in Ireland prepared by the Irish contribution to the Irish economy. Regardless, Business and Employer’s Confederation (IBEC) the elusive nature of these figures not only draws and reel off the statistics. However, in a lacuna attention to the difficulty of presenting a clear which finds echoes in other aspects of the picture of the state of the sector but also suggests industry, the IBEC report has not been published that what is happening within it is either not since 2011. A draft 2012 version was prepared based on sound and coherent policies or that, in but came with the acknowledgement that, despite an increasingly diversified and splintered a nominal obligation to do so, not all projects marketplace, it has become more difficult to made with Irish Film Board support or Section achieve a clear and coherent picture of what’s 481 certification, had submitted figures while happening. those who had some were either “incomplete or For now, no one seems to bothered as long as clearly inaccurate”. So, for the past 2-3 years our things are ticking along. And – absence of sense of the industry in quantitative terms has reliable figure notwithstanding – the general been based on patchy information from a variety sense is that the screen industries as a whole in of sources apparently using inconsistent Ireland continue to outperform virtually every methodologies to produce figures describing the sector in the rest of the economy in terms of sector. relative growth. In December 2013, the Irish Film Board This is not to suggest however that there will produced figures suggesting that €168m was be a slew of Irish films coming soon to an contributed to the Irish economy in 2013 through Arthouse/Multiplex near you. For what is most “employment creation and spend on local goods notable about Irish audio-visual production in and services”. Furthermore this was an 18% 2013 –the twentieth anniversary of the re- increase on 2012 and 42% up on 2011. This constitution of the Irish Film Board under order seems like good news but it’s hard to reconcile it from the then new Minister for Culture Michael with the figures from the last IBEC report, which D Higgins – is that it has diversified into a multi- suggested that €156m was spent in Ireland in platform and highly stratified activity of 2011. There is also some inconsistency in the enormous variety. To speak of ‘Irish Film’ is to Board’s own statistics: on October 15 2013 (the attempt to corall a range of practices that include day on which an adjustment to Section 481 was webisode internet drama like Dannan announced) the IFB released a press statement Breathnach’s Cuckoo ,1 no-budget / low-budget stating that screen production in 2012 was valued _________________ at €180m in terms of expenditure on local goods 1. Cuckoo is a 28-minute Irish webseries directed by and services. If the €168m figure above DannanBreathnachthat recently secured a distribution represents an 18% increase on 2012, then the 2012 deal with Channel France 4 and JRS.TV (Just the ·/· ________________________ ISSN 1699-311X 210 experimental and narrative films (see Donal Simultaneously, The History Channel’s ambitious Foreman’s essay below), thriving international Vikings completed its Season 2 shoot at TV drama and post-production sectors, Ballyhenry Studios in Wicklow, while 25 personally funded documentaries (eg The Irish kilometres up the road, the Sam Mendes- Pub , Dir: Alex Fegan 2) and an often struggling produced Penny Dreadful , a late-19 th Century-set feature film category with one or two annual fantasy horror made for Showtime occupied breakout hits (eg The Guard, What Richard Did , back-from-the-brink of extinction Ardmore Once etc.) and a myriad of misses. On several Studios for five months from October 2013. levels we regard 2013 as a tipping point away These, along with the smaller-scale (at least in from the 1993 ambitions to fund a national budgetary terms) UK productions, Moonfleet (an cinema centred on theatrically released feature Element Pictures co-production for Sky film productions that tell ‘our stories’ to – Television), Undeniable (an ITV drama shot in primarily– ourselves while, noting Dublin and Wicklow in November 2013) and the simultaneously and paradoxically a mushrooming second series of the BBC’s crime-horror “Ripper of personal and often highly accomplished Street”, provided the backbone of live-action moving-image storytelling that finds limited production. As such it would not be unreasonable distribution through non-theatrical channels. In to characterize the domestic industry as akin to this splintering, the Irish audio-visual sector is other sectors of the economy – reliant on foreign unexceptional in reflecting the radical direct investment. Indeed even the Irish-set technological changes and globalization of material is more often than not co-produced with ‘content’ in the digital age. But accompanying UK broadcasters. In comedy, Chris O’Dowd’s these shifts and more fundamentally it also Moone Boy commenced shooting on its third reflects and, in some cases responds to, a series for Sky in July 2013 (and would win an dramatically altered understanding of Ireland as International Emmy for its first series in an ‘imagined community’ since 1993. Thus, November) while Brendan O’Carroll’s Mrs while the concept of a national cinema as a useful Brown’s Boys a BBC/RTE co-production, having paradigm within which to not only interpret but won a second Best Comedy award at the UK TV also fund audiovisual production has gradually Choice awards in September, officially cemented eroded in the interim, we see a proliferation of its status as the most popular television show in practices that place the local and global in the UK and Ireland, topping the ratings in both dynamic tension through a variety of creative and countries last Christmas. These were joined in economic emphases. Spring 2014 by a new work from Graham Small Screen: Big Audiences Linehan, The Walshes another RTE/BBC joint effort billed as an antidote to the comedy Production for small-screen consumption (which phenomenon of “Mrs Brown”. means television and animation but increasingly How, if at all, does the export-led nature of means film too: see below) remains the lynchpin such productions impact upon textual concerns? of the sector. In television the large-scale US It varies. While the broad humour – and appeal – productions continue to dominate in financial of “Mrs Brown” requires no particular familiarity terms: HBO’s Game of Thrones completed with Irish culture, the quirkier Moone Boy makes shooting for Season 4 in Northern Ireland in fewer concessions: what, if anything, do November 2013 at which point activity shifted audiences make of use of “Tico’s Tune” (better south of the border where Dublin-based Screen known to Irish audiences as the theme to the Gay Scene recommenced their post-production role.