Towards a Transnational Cinema in Ireland: Funding, Production, and Content

Agnes Kakasi, Dublin Institute of Technology

Transnational, Transcultural, Transmedial: European Cinema Today. International Graduate Film Studies Conference. May, 2010, Cork, Ireland.

Abstract

Towards a Transnational Cinema in Ireland: Funding, Production, and Content

The argument developed in this paper makes a case for recognising the increasing transnationalism of Irish film, both in terms of its content, and also through co-productions and funding. Based on the document analysis of official guidelines for film funding programmes, the article claims that the Irish Film Board invests in the maintenance of a national cinema paradigm, even in conjunction with promoting transnational means of production, and even though transnational cinematic texts are becoming more and more manifest at the level of content. The article then offers a classification of contemporary Irish films within a transnational framework, arguing that international co-productions and filmmakers’ increasing engagement with representations of “Celtic Tiger” immigration result in the emergence of a growing number of transnational cinematic texts. The article concludes by the close reading of two current documentary films that epitomise transnational cinematic texts, as a result of their content and production background. The aim of the article is to highlight the complex relationship between the national and transnational in the Irish film context, an interplay that yields a new cinematic value in Irish film: that of transnationality.