Documentary in a Changing State: Ireland since the 1990s

Foreword

editor of Irish Journalism Before Independence: More a disease than a profession (Manchester University Press, 2011). He spent over a decade working as a political journalist, including with The Irish Times, The Sunday Times, the Sunday Tribune and RTÉ. He now works as a senior lecturer in the School of Communications at Dublin City University. MARY RAFTERY is an award-winning journalist and television producer. She is the author of Suffer The Little Children (1999), director of a number of key documentaries including States of Fear (1999) and Cardinal Secrets (2002), and co-scripted No Escape (2010), a dramatised account based on the Ryan Report commissioned by the Abbey Theatre. DONALD TAYLOR BLACK is a documentary film-maker and writer. A former Chairman of Documentary, the MEDIA Project for the Creative Documentary , which was based in Copenhagen, he was also a co-founder of the European Documentary Network. He is Head of the Department of Film & Media at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin and Creative Director of the National Film School. His documentaries include At the Cinema Palace – Liam O’Leary (1983); Irish Cinema: Ourselves alone? (1995); Hearts and Souls (1995); The Joy (1997); David Farrell: Elusive moments (2008). JULIAN VIGNOLES has worked in RTÉ for over thirty years. He started as a producer in Radio 2, moving to Radio 1 in 1985. He was series producer of The Pat Kenny Show and Liveline and a three-times Jacob’s Award winner for documentary . He moved to RTÉ Television in 1994, producing in Young Peoples’ Programmes, before becoming series producer of Would You Believe. He moved to Entertainment in 2002 and was deputy head of the department from 2003 to 2009. He is currently Assistant Commissioning Editor, Factual. KEN WARDROP is a graduate of National Film School, Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. During his time at film school, Ken specialised in directing documentary film. His films include the award-winning shorts Love is Like a Butterfly (2004), Useless Dog (2004) and The Herd (2008). His graduation film Undressing My Mother (2004) was a multiple award winner. He has co-founded the production company Venom Film with his former classmate Andrew Freedman and is director and editor of His & Hers (2010). PROF. BRIAN WINSTON was the first Lincoln Chair of Communications at the University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. He is the author of a number of books including Media Technology and Society (Routledge, 1998), Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries (British Film Institute, 2000), Messages (Routledge, 2005). He is the scriptwriter of A Boatload of Wild Irishmen (2009) – directed by Mac Dara O Curraidhín – a documentary on Robert Flaherty (TG4/IFB/BAI). xvi Notes on Contributors This is a remarkable book, a coherent collection of essays and interviews which gives, not a snapshot but a detailed three-dimensional picture of the state of the documentary film in Ireland. It arises from the 2007 documentary conference , organised jointly by the School of Business and Humanities and the National Film School at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dún Laoghaire (IADT), which brought together film-makers, academics (often also film-makers) and funders – a thing seldom done. And this book reflects that comprehensiveness and expands on it. It covers the waterfront – industrial level analysis as well as personal accounts of film-making; the causes célèbres and the less contentious output; the impact of technological and social developments. It wears its learning lightly. One might have thought that this combination of approaches was so self-evident for a conference, or a report surveying a national documentary scene, that it would be a commonplace; but it is not. Such a broad range is seldom tackled at the same meeting or between the same covers; and rarely so succinctly and in such a well-focused manner. Documentary in a Changing State does what it is says on the tin: by examining a communications mode that speaks to the heart of the social agenda, it not only explains Irish documentary but also offers insights into the Irish state as well. Documentary in Ireland has a force which it perhaps lacks in some other societies where authority has learned to cope with its criticisms by, basically, ignoring them. Here is the background to the films that have shaken the country’s central institutions. The Irish film-makers have not shirked from investigating history and current problems, the two things that...