Restriction lift date: 2026-12-31
Complicating the nation: the archival legacies of amateur cine-culture in Ireland (1900-1984)
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Date
2025
Authors
Scally, Ellen
Journal Title
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Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
This thesis argues for a reframing of Ireland’s amateur cinema history, through the excavation and examination of small gauge cine-engagement as a culturally relegated form of personal and socio-political expression in Ireland from 1900-1980. Amateur cine-culture and filmmaking have existed in Ireland since the earliest days of cinema, though these efforts are often marginalised in established historical accounts, characterised as minor digressions or failed attempts in service of the greater goal that dominated film-related discourse in Ireland for most of the twentieth century: the development of a national commercial film industry. This discourse was distinctly nationalistic in tone, reflective of pervasive anxieties regarding the identity of the emergent nation during Ireland’s then-ongoing emancipation from the British Empire. It is argued that the history of Irish amateur cinema represents a subversion of the preoccupation with the construction of a narrative of Irishness which dominated mainstream media discourse, presenting an alternative view on Irish community life. In the period under consideration, film enthusiasts and cine clubs consistently documented family, social and community life on film. The legacy of amateur film production and culture, which were often distinctly local in focus, shows evidence of extensive and engaged transnational exchange with filmmaking trends and amateur communities outside of Ireland, primarily Britain. This thesis represents the most comprehensive scholarly effort to date to renegotiate and interrogate these discursively absent “alternative histories” and the ways in which they have been appropriated and re-framed for preservation and exhibition.
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Keywords
Film studies , Irish cinema , Film history , Amateur cinema , Community cinema , Archives , Memory , Local studies
Citation
Scally, E. 2025. Complicating the nation: the archival legacies of amateur cine-culture in Ireland (1900-1984). PhD Thesis, University College Cork.