2026-09-22T05:06:55Zhttps://cora.ucc.ie/server/oai/request

oai:cora.ucc.ie:10468/180322025-10-15T02:02:14Zcom_10468_384com_10468_2com_10468_2157com_10468_1col_10468_385col_10468_7950col_10468_8983

2026-12-31 Chambers, Ciara Scally, Ellen Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance Ireland Irish Research Council 2025-10-14T11:34:22Z 2025-10-14T11:34:22Z 2025 2025 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. Not peer reviewed Accepted Version application/pdf Scally, E. 2025. Complicating the nation: the archival legacies of amateur cine-culture in Ireland (1900-1984). PhD Thesis, University College Cork. 255 https://hdl.handle.net/10468/18032 en University College Cork Irish Research Council (Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship) © 2025, Ellen Scally. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Film studies Irish cinema Film history Amateur cinema Community cinema Archives Memory Local studies Complicating the nation: the archival legacies of amateur cine-culture in Ireland (1900-1984) Doctoral thesis Doctoral PhD - Doctor of Philosophyinfo:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess