Barry Monahan

The volume offers a broad range of academic approaches to contemporary and historical Irish filmmaking and representations of nationality, national identity, and theoretical questions around the construction of Ireland and Irishness on the screen.

Culture and Contexts

Ireland and Cinema

Laura Rascaroli

Gwenda Young

With the advent of digital filmmaking and critical recognition of the relevance of self expression, first-person narratives, and personal practices of memorialization, interest in the amateur moving image has never been stronger. Bringing together key scholars in the field, and revealing the rich variety of amateur filmmaking-from home movies of Imperial India and film diaries of life in contemporary China, to the work of leading auteurs such as Joseph Morder and Péter Forgács-Amateur Filmmaking highlights the importance of amateur cinema as a core object of critical interest across an array of disciplines. With contributions on the role of the archive, on YouTube, and on the impact of new technologies on amateur filmmaking, these essays offer the first comprehensive examination of this growing field.

The Home Movie, the Archive, the Web

Amateur Filmmaking

The Films of Lenny Abrahamson: A Filmmaking of Philosophys of provides a comprehensive study of the films of contemporary, highly critically-appraised Irish director Lenny Abrahamson. As well as considering the aesthetics, cultural reflections and philosophical concerns in the better known work of this dynamic and profoundly original Irish filmmaker, it also looks at his short film – 3 Joes – and his little-seen student film Mendel. As the first sustained study of Abrahamson's engaging and cinematically rich work, Barry Monahan's book sheds light on the aesthetic wealth of the artist and connects his stylistic innovations to the context of his projects' socio-cultural background, to his own influences in modern cinema – going beyond Irish film, to reflect upon the works of auteurs such as Bergman, Tarkovsky, Kubrick, and Kaurismäki among others – and to a broader reflection on what his canon has to contribute to the philosophy of cinema, art, and questions about human existence in the 21st century.

Barry Monahan

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