Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This provides a complete history of Irish filmmaking from the silent period to the present focusing paricularly on Irish history and politics.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

$19.95. film Rockett's survey has a dual purposeto give the history of Irish cinema and to explain the portrayal of Ireland in films from other countries. The history travels from Ireland's meager output in the early 1920s, through American domination of the marketplace, to renewed interest in both international production in Ireland and local filmmaking in the late 1950s. The discussion of Ireland as depicted in other films is divided into ``images of violence'' and ``romanticism and realism.'' The work pays too much attention to obscure films and business matters and lacks a filmography, but it is one of the first large-scale accounts of its kind. Recommended for cinema collections. About half the length of Rockett's work and correspondingly less detailed, Slide's book covers the same topics and adds discussions about films based on Irish literary sources and Irish-born actors appearing in American films. Like some of Slide's other cinema books, it offers a somewhat superficial treatment. It is peppered throughout with anti-Irish statements such as ``The Irish brought to the United States . . . political corruption and ardent and often repressive Roman Catholicism.'' Suitable for general audiences. Roy Liebman, California State Univ. Lib., Los Angeles (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

A lively, detailed examination of the history of Irish filmmaking and the ways in which Ireland has been represented in films generally, especially those of the US and Britain. The authors present not a dry exposition of names, facts, and figures, but a sense of the living history of cinema in and about Ireland. We see the close connections with political movements Irish producers felt and tried to express in different periods. We get a sense of why American films about Ireland convey a nostalgic feeling for the land, and why British films convey a sense of violence intrinsic to Irish history. We also get some sense of why and how different competing ideas of romanticism affect different films about Irish experience. This detailed, factual treatment of the history of Irish cinema also contains a detailed set of perceptive if brief analyses of films about Ireland. It is valuable not merely because it is probably the only such book available, but for its central insight that both the history of cinema in Ireland and the representations of it from elsewhere are not some sort of autonomous development, but are tied to the values and perspectives, the human content, of those who made and received the films and of those who exercised political control over their production and distribution. Highly recommended for upper-division and graduate students.-I. Deer, University of South Florida