Uncovering The Film Company of Ireland with Veronica Johnson | Online with SFFP

Описание: On Friday, July 18th, San Francisco Film Preserve was delighted to host Dr. Veronica Johnson for an online presentation on her in-depth and compelling research on the first indigenous Irish film company—named, unsurprisingly, the Film Company of Ireland.

A former Irish Research Council Scholar, Veronica Johnson is an early and silent film historian currently working on a history of the Film Company of Ireland. She has lectured at University of Galway and Maynooth University and is co-editor and book review editor for the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. She was recently elected as a council member of the International Association for Media and History.

Established in the month before the Easter Rising 1916, the Film Company of Ireland began producing films with actors from the Abbey Theatre. They released their first film in August 1916 and went on to make over thirty more. This presentation will introduce this little-known company, examining its approach to filmmaking, the setbacks it encountered, the beauty of its first feature film, its attempt to break into the American market, and the importance of Ellen (Nell) O’Mara Sullivan to the company’s success.

In an era when Irish people had little to no opportunity to represent themselves on screen, foreign depictions of the Irish generally portrayed them as poor, disheveled, and disruptive. The Irish Film Company strove to buck this trend, initiating a native Irish film industry that would portray Irish people onscreen in a multiplicity of roles, rather than the one-dimensional stereotypes to which cinemagoers were accustomed in the 1910s.

Johnson’s research investigates not just the roots and history of this critical but forgotten enterprise, but also seeks to discover more about the life and career of the Film Company’s female owner, Limerick woman Ellen (Nell) O’Mara Sullivan. Through a vast array of historical documents, conversations with relatives, and systematic archival research, Johnson has pieced together the most comprehensive picture yet of the earliest flickers of Irish film. A company founded right on the cusp of revolution, with actors from the most crucial theatre in Irish history, led by a woman years before women had the right to vote, the story of the Irish Film Company of Ireland and Nell O’Mara Sullivan is one that truly needs to be heard.

Image credit: Irish Film Institute