IRISH FILM & TV RESEARCH ONLINE
Irish Film & TV Research
Online is a website designed to bring together the wide diversity
of research material relating to Irish-made cinema and television as
well as to Irish-themed audio-visual representations produced outside
of Ireland. It incorporates three searchable databases: Irish Film
& Television Index; Irish Film & Television Biographies;
and Irish Film & Television Bibliography; and the Irish
Postgraduate Film Research Seminar, an annual conference of film
studies' postgraduate students based in Ireland or engaged in researching
Irish material elsewhere. The project is based in the School of Drama,
Film and Music, Trinity College Dublin.
The impetus for the Irish
Film & Television Index was Kevin Rockett's The
Irish Filmography: Fiction Films 1896
- 1996 (1996), which documented all fiction films made in Ireland
and about Ireland and the Irish produced worldwide since the beginnings
of cinema. Under the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social
Sciences' Major Grant Scheme, 2003-05, funding was awarded to update
the original filmography and to document, with the same worldwide remit,
all major non-fiction films, including newsreels, and animation, made
for cinema and television. In addition to the IRCHSS, the other sponsors
of the project are Trinity College Dublin; the Higher Education Authority's
North South Programme for Collaborative Research, 2003-06; and Bord
Scannán na héireann/Irish Film Board, 2006.
Since 2003, filmographer and
archivist Eugene Finn has been expanding the database which, incorporating
the original Irish Filmography, has drawn on the archival and
paper records of many of the world's leading film archives and specialist
libraries, including ones in Ireland, Britain, the USA, and Australia.
We are especially grateful for the on-going support we receive from
the Irish Film Institute's archive
and library. At present
the Irish Film & Television Index has almost 40,000 titles,
while new entries will be added in an on-going way.
The two complementary databases
covering biographies and bibliography which are still in the early stages
of development will be expanded over time. In addition, the ambition
is to use the website as a publishing outlet for new research, as well
as for out-of-print publications and archival documents, including,
it is hoped, the extensive records of Ireland's film censors.
While the website will need
on-going editorial maintenance and development, its value for researchers,
whether academic, from within the film industry, or the general public,
is in its easy packaging of information concerning Irish-made or Irish-themed
audio-visual material. In many cases, such information may have been
gathered from numerous sources both within Ireland and elsewhere. Using
the searchable fields, a researcher can almost instantly find a particular
film, its cast list or production personnel, read a synopsis of its
content, establish where a copy of it might be held, what has been written
about it, identify a list of complementary titles through a keyword
search, or, using the biographical database, access further information
on cast and crew.
As a living archive, we would encourage feedback and invite online visitors to contribute to the development of the project by sending us information, additions and amendments.
The booklet that was published to coincide with the launch of Irish Film & TV Research Online is available online in PDF format.
Professor Kevin Rockett,
Irish Film & TV Research
Online Director,
School of Drama, Film and Music,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2,
Ireland.