IRISH FILM and TELEVISION ‐ 2009 the Year in Review Tony Tracy (Ed.)
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Estudios Irlandeses, Number 5, 2010, pp. 203-255 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ AEDEI IRISH FILM AND TELEVISION ‐ 2009 The Year in Review Tony Tracy (ed.) Irish Film and Television Review 2009. Introduction Tony Tracy ..............................................................................................................................204 Myth and Murder in The Daisy Chain Zélie Asava ..............................................................................................................................209 Troubles Cinema: Five Minutes of Heaven & Fifty Dead Men Walking Ruth Barton .............................................................................................................................213 “Looking at the Stars”: TV3 adapts Lady Windermere’s Fan Liam Burke.............................................................................................................................216 Masks and Faces: Identities Dennis Condon .....................................................................................................................220 Being Digital – Irish cinema and digital production Roddy Flynn ............................................................................................................................223 The Yellow Bittern Robert Furze ............................................................................................................................228 Donal Donnelly: An Appreciation Michael Patrick Gillespie ........................................................................................................231 Sketching Success: Brown Bag Films go to the Oscars Sinead Gillett..........................................................................................................................235 Helen Padraig Killeen .....................................................................................................................239 Ondine Paul McGuirk ........................................................................................................................243 Pure Mule, The Last Weekend: The Finite Televisual Narrative Barry Monahan ........................................................................................................................247 This Sporting Life: Recent Irish sports documentaries Harvey O’Brien ....................................................................................................................250 Savage Sounds Maria O’Brien........................................................................................................................253 Copyright (c) 2010 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. ________________________ ISSN 1699-311X 204 Estudios Irlandeses, Number 5, 2010, pp. 204-208 ______________________________________________________________________________________________ AEDEI Irish Film and Television 2009 Tony Tracy At the launch of the 2008 annual Irish Film Too late for inclusion in last year’s review was Board Review – complete with flowing wine, a mention of the 2008 PricewaterhouseCoopers lavish publication and complementary DVD report commissioned by The Irish Film Board compilation (Irish Talent on Film Vol. V) – CEO “to inform a new landmark strategic plan for the Simon Perry, still recalling the success of Once – audiovisual content production sector.”1 The stated that there had never been a better time for report was valuable on many fronts, not least Irish cinema. There had never been so many co- because it refreshed statistics that were well out productions in the pipeline, films in of date, but especially because it increased the development, in production or about to be scope of its findings beyond the bald production released. In spite of such ebullience, 2009 didn’t data of earlier reports to consider the “real in reality feel like a Golden Age for Irish cinema economy” of the industry. Thus we discovered and we were denied the opportunity to hear the that “the sector is valued at over €557.3 million, Irish Film Board’s current prognosis of the employs over 6,000 individuals and represents industry as, in keeping with the new culture of 0.3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)”. We public sector austerity, there was neither launch, also learnt that the sector employs 6,905 publication nor DVD compilation in late 2009. individuals and that an estimated 567 companies That there is still a Irish Film Board is something operate comprising production companies, post- of a miracle in itself, for it has been a year of production companies and service providers. prolonged economic and cultural (not to mention There is provocative and real detail in the environmental) shocks in Ireland that resulted in findings on “freelancers” – a sizable bulk of the unprecedented curtailments of public spending – industry: that 90% are under the age of 50 and a situation comparable to the one that brought the majority are male, with earnings between about the premature disbanding of the first Irish €2,500 and €150,000 in 2006 and 2007. Film Board in 1987. To understand why this Freelancers are “a well educated group with 59% action wasn’t repeated involves consideration of having achieved either a Degree, Master/ a number of factors including changes in the Postgraduate Degree or Doctorate/ Post Doctoral globalization of the culture industry and Degree – only 2% of freelancers have no formal Ireland’s place in it, the cultural and psychic qualification at all.” For all the emphasis on, and legacy of the confidence engendered by the attention garnered by feature film production, the Celtic Tiger years, the elaborate and extensive report notes that the area of post-production has infrastructure (education, training, facilities, experienced the largest growth in recent years – equipment) that grew up around the audiovisual with a sizable proportion of employees earning and cultural sector during the good times, the €35,000 per annum. Here then is objective international success of Irish cultural producers – evidence of the much vaunted “knowledge in film, music, drama and literature most notably economy” – the buzz concept at the heart of – over the past two decades, and the awareness much recent Government discussions on of the value of an “indigenous” Irish culture in education and future growth – or the basis of it. an increasingly multicultural society and open The depth and subtlety of the report was always economy. A hugely significant factor however, ___________ was how sophisticated the sector itself has 1. http://www.filmboard.ie/files/Final%20Audio become in arguing its own case for sustained Visual%20Sector%20Survey%20Report-1.pdf. state support. _______________________ ISSN 1699-311X 205 going to be useful in informing future strategy rejected by Minister for Arts Sport and Tourism but as the 2009 progressed it became, literally, Martin Cullen, who said that “earmarking the vital. In a bid to stop the haemorrhaging of Irish Film Board for closure was an ‘horrific public money in the aftermath of a spectacular approach’”: He had fought to keep the 100 per collapse in tax receipts, the government cent tax exemption last year because it helped to appointed economist Colm McCarthy to chair a generate a €150 million industry; Both the IFB committee (aka “an Bord Snip Nua”) charged and “Culture Ireland”, which promotes and with identifying where savings might be made. advance Irish arts internationally, generated “far, The resulting, “McCarthy Report” (published in far greater return” for the State than the money July 2009 and properly titled “Report of the put into it in the first place. Elsewhere, far from Special Group on Public Service Numbers and simply defending the value and importance of Expenditure Programmes”) was broad-ranging the arts to a society at large, Cullen suggested and cold-eyed in its targets. In relation to the IFB that the cultural sector would become central to it proposed that “… sector-specific agencies such Ireland’s future economic policies: as the Irish Film Board, should be merged within Culture is really at the centre of what we’re going a re-constituted Enterprise Ireland.” It argued to do going forward . It’s the biggest growth that “The discontinuation of Irish Film Board area, in spite of the world downturn, that’s going and investment fund” would garner savings of to come over the next 15 years. some € 20 millions. The logic of this action was based upon the premise that the IFB was In fact, so foregrounded were economic fundamentally an “enterprise activity” – along arguments in defence of the film sector that any with organizations such as Bord Iascaigh Mhara, trace of intrinsic merit seemed a secondary Bord Bia (the fish board and food board consequence, at best. Even when the IFB seemed respectively) – that “sold” Ireland at home and to summon “soft” values in defence of its principally abroad. It was a daft continued existence, misunderstanding of the board’s activities but To be taken into consideration also are the nonetheless its argument for consolidation was consequences for Ireland if it were to become the one being applied across a range of public bodies only developed country in the world producing no and “qangos” (quasi non-governmental films for the cinema, and thereby losing the most organizations), which proliferated