Tony Tracy - Independent Researcher (original) (raw)
Papers by Tony Tracy
Interview with Simon Perry
Bord Scannan na hEireann/the Irish Film Board (IFB) is Ireland's national film agency. Recons... more Bord Scannan na hEireann/the Irish Film Board (IFB) is Ireland's national film agency. Reconstituted by Minister Michael D Higgins in 1992, the day to day operations of the IFB are directed and managed by the Chief Executive who reports to the board. This position was held by Rod Stoneman from 1992-2002 and Mark Woods 2003-2005. Simon Perry became the third CEO of the Film Board upon his widely welcomed appointment in November 2005. Tony Tracy met him in his Galway office in February, 2008. TT: Since you are not likely to be well known to the majority of readers of Estudios Irlandeses, let's start by hearing a bit about you; where you came from, and the expertise you've accumulated--and how that's relevant to your current job. SP: Fundamentally I'm a producer and in the 1970s I started being an independent film maker / would-be producer. I did a bit of film journalism for Variety, which is where I learnt how the business works. But I always really wanted to produce. I did try directing but I didn't enjoy it. At the start of the 1980s I set up my own film company and through the 1980s I made a number of independent British films mainly, but also a number of French films. I worked with Michael Radcliff; we made three films together Another Time Another Place, 1984 and White Mischief. The films were getting bigger as we went along. I also made a couple of films in France as I wanted to understand more about the rest of Europe and in particular the French way of making films. That started a whole conviction in me that for the future of independent cinema in Britain, and I now believe it to be true of Ireland as well; that if we want to make the films we want to make, we need very good allies in the rest of Europe, we need to be part of that network for financing films. This came out of a context of growing up in Britain where cinema was for many decades dependent on Hollywood. I fundamentally thought that that was unhealthy. In the 1990s, I ran an organisation called British Screen for 10 years which was the national film fund for new British feature films. During my 10 years we made more than 140 films possible, including The Crying Game as well as films by Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. Those particular films would not have been possible without funding from the rest of Europe. The British filmmakers who I think are the most interesting have always have had a large audience in the rest of the world. I feel in those 10 years we dragged Britain into Europe and showed them the possibilities of co-production. We also were co-producers of other films that came from the rest of Europe. It was an interesting strategy and it was very different for Britain to be involved in films in that way and not simply a small player in English language cinema which was what it had always been condemned to be. British Screen was then taken over by the Film Council which was a new institution set up by the New Labour. I didn't really agree with that because I didn't think that was what Britain needed, I still don't, so I took it as an opportunity to teach and to consult for film festivals and to do other things until this job came up here. TT: What's the attraction of a job like this? SP: I find it very interesting to use public money to try to make a difference to the way the capitalist market wants to make things happen. You need public money to nudge the boat in different directions. That's what I'm trying to do here. I still believe in the benefits of European partners. There is a long dependence of Irish Cinema on the British which needs to be broken --we need to get over the post-colonial relationship. I believe that Irish film makers will be better equipped to make their films if they have partners elsewhere in Europe as well in the UK and the US of course. TT: I have to smile when I hear the 2nd British Chief Executive of the Irish Film Board saying that we have to get over our post-colonial relationship with Britain! …
Our Fathers
Routledge eBooks, Nov 30, 2022
Ageing Masculinities in Contemporary European and Anglophone Cinema
Routledge eBooks, Nov 30, 2022
Wedded to the land? Representations of rural ageing masculinities in Irish culture and society
Journal of Aging Studies, Dec 1, 2022
Ageing Masculinities in Irish Literature and Visual Culture
Routledge eBooks, May 26, 2022
Wedded to the land? Representations of rural ageing masculinities in Irish culture and society
Journal of Aging Studies
Historical Dictionary of Irish Cinema
Reference Reviews, 2008
HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF RODERICK FLYNN and PATRICK BRERETON ... Historical Dictionaries of Liter... more HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF RODERICK FLYNN and PATRICK BRERETON ... Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts Jon Woronoff, Series Editor 1. Science Fiction Literature, by Brian Stableford, 2004. 2. Hong Kong Cinema, by Lisa Odham Stokes, ...
Estudios Irlandeses, 2006
estudios irlandeses, 2023
The Irish Are Coming: Irish Film and Television in 2015
Journal of Irish Studies, 2016
Irish Film and Television – 2017. Introduction: Waking the Film Makers: Diversity and Dynamism in Irish Screen Industries 2017
Journal of Irish Studies, 2018
Quantifying National Cinema: A Case Study of the Irish Film Board 1993–2013
Film Studies, 2016
This article sets out to reinvigorate national cinema studies in an Irish context through a quant... more This article sets out to reinvigorate national cinema studies in an Irish context through a quantitative analysis of films financed by the Irish Film Board between 1993 and 2013. In constructing and coding a database of titles produced with the aid of state finance during this period, the authors argue for a methodology that broadens the inductive approaches of textual analysis that have dominated discussions of Irish cinema to date. By establishing recurring genres, narrative patterns, themes and character types present in IFB-funded films during this period, this article demonstrates how the professional objectives of IFB personnel have shaped institutional funding outcomes.
Estudios Irlandeses, 2011
Estudios Irlandeses, 2007
Estudios Irlandeses, Mar 15, 2012
I Used to Live Here (Frank Berry 2015)
Journal of Irish Studies, 2016
Frank Berry is an emerging Irish-film maker who received widespread praise for his preceding, deb... more Frank Berry is an emerging Irish-film maker who received widespread praise for his preceding, debut film, the feature-length documentary Ballymun Lullaby (2011) (reviewed in Estudios Irlandeses 7). (1) Building on several years of community film-making experience, that film followed a local community music project commissioned to mark the regeneration of Ireland's least loved social experiment: the Ballymun tower blocks scheme. The film's formal conventionality (primarily a series of interviews interspersed with footage of rehearsals) belied the energy of its message of hope and renewal, incarnated by dynamic music teacher Ron Cooney, who inspires his young singers to rise above the everyday circumstances of their lives through song. Berry's film did a major service in overhauling Ballymun's persistent on-screen depiction as a social failure evident in films such as Pigs (1984), Into the West (1992) and Adam and Paul (2004). Its infectious energy and life-affirming p...
IRISH FILM AND TELEVISION - 2010 The Year in Review
Introduction In 2010 Ireland's reputation as a modern, progressive economy reached a nadir un... more Introduction In 2010 Ireland's reputation as a modern, progressive economy reached a nadir unimaginable even a year ago. Over the past twelve months, increasingly negative assessments of the country's political and economic acumen became commonplace in the national and then international media. (1) At official levels, Ireland's resilient cultural activity--often spurned or taken for granted in the years of the Celtic Tiger--emerged as a 'gold standard' of national identity and a key instrument in forging internal cohesion (in the absence of the Catholic Church which had another annus horribilis), creating jobs, and rehabilitating our international reputation. In January 2011, Culture Ireland launched Imagine Ireland, a year of Irish Arts in America (http://www.imagineireland.ie). Clearly an outcome of the Farmleigh Conference discussed in these pages last year, the initiative can be read as an attempt to 'monetizing culture' (as Dermot Desmond put it then...
The Other Side of Sleep (2011)
Beyond the abnormally high instance of male crises narratives that dominate recent Irish film out... more Beyond the abnormally high instance of male crises narratives that dominate recent Irish film output (Parked, Savage, Sensation, Rewind, The Guard,) and genre cycles (notably horror) IFB/RTE funding has in recent years facilitated the emergence of a heretofore underexplored setting that has been absent and even reviled by Irish audiovisual media: the midlands. This is a broad church ranging from Garage, Eamon, Eden, the creative documentary His and Hers and the TV series Pure Mule. To this list we can now add Rebecca Daly's confident debut feature The Other Side of Sleep. A defining characteristic of these midland narratives is their contemporary setting in towns outside of the traditional rural / urban axis which take Ireland's interior as an expressive setting of indeterminacy and transition, albeit in often quite different ways. Stylistically they deliberately depart from the tourist gaze tradition of Ireland on film or generic conventions in an often meditative perceptio...
I'm not a big fan of Irish movies, I don't find them to be technically that accomplished ... more I'm not a big fan of Irish movies, I don't find them to be technically that accomplished and I don't find them that intelligent. So I'm trying to get away from the description of the movie as an Irish film in a way. John Michael McDonagh, 2014 When John Michael McDonagh's off-hand comments during promotional duties for Calvary were picked up by Irish Times journalist Donald Clarke in September 2014 (Clarke 2014), they provided a timely intervention for academics beginning courses on Irish cinema and provoked an inevitable--and at times inevitably simplistic - backlash across Irish print and broadcast media that bordered--as McDonagh later charged--on thinly veiled xenophobia. (1) In a subsequent statement that put the question of Irishness and its 'privileges' at the centre of the debate, the writer/director defended his comments and his right to make them by saying: ... I was intentionally trying to position Calvary for an international audience. I didn&...
Adaptations: Tara Road and Breakfast on Pluto
Journal of Irish Studies, 2006
... not embarrassing 500000. The film was unusual in the prominence it gave two female leads (An... more ... not embarrassing 500000. The film was unusual in the prominence it gave two female leads (Andie McDowell and Olivia Williams), relegating male characters to the fringeswith the exception of the 'almost'affairs. It was 3. Tara ...
Interview with Simon Perry
Bord Scannan na hEireann/the Irish Film Board (IFB) is Ireland's national film agency. Recons... more Bord Scannan na hEireann/the Irish Film Board (IFB) is Ireland's national film agency. Reconstituted by Minister Michael D Higgins in 1992, the day to day operations of the IFB are directed and managed by the Chief Executive who reports to the board. This position was held by Rod Stoneman from 1992-2002 and Mark Woods 2003-2005. Simon Perry became the third CEO of the Film Board upon his widely welcomed appointment in November 2005. Tony Tracy met him in his Galway office in February, 2008. TT: Since you are not likely to be well known to the majority of readers of Estudios Irlandeses, let's start by hearing a bit about you; where you came from, and the expertise you've accumulated--and how that's relevant to your current job. SP: Fundamentally I'm a producer and in the 1970s I started being an independent film maker / would-be producer. I did a bit of film journalism for Variety, which is where I learnt how the business works. But I always really wanted to produce. I did try directing but I didn't enjoy it. At the start of the 1980s I set up my own film company and through the 1980s I made a number of independent British films mainly, but also a number of French films. I worked with Michael Radcliff; we made three films together Another Time Another Place, 1984 and White Mischief. The films were getting bigger as we went along. I also made a couple of films in France as I wanted to understand more about the rest of Europe and in particular the French way of making films. That started a whole conviction in me that for the future of independent cinema in Britain, and I now believe it to be true of Ireland as well; that if we want to make the films we want to make, we need very good allies in the rest of Europe, we need to be part of that network for financing films. This came out of a context of growing up in Britain where cinema was for many decades dependent on Hollywood. I fundamentally thought that that was unhealthy. In the 1990s, I ran an organisation called British Screen for 10 years which was the national film fund for new British feature films. During my 10 years we made more than 140 films possible, including The Crying Game as well as films by Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. Those particular films would not have been possible without funding from the rest of Europe. The British filmmakers who I think are the most interesting have always have had a large audience in the rest of the world. I feel in those 10 years we dragged Britain into Europe and showed them the possibilities of co-production. We also were co-producers of other films that came from the rest of Europe. It was an interesting strategy and it was very different for Britain to be involved in films in that way and not simply a small player in English language cinema which was what it had always been condemned to be. British Screen was then taken over by the Film Council which was a new institution set up by the New Labour. I didn't really agree with that because I didn't think that was what Britain needed, I still don't, so I took it as an opportunity to teach and to consult for film festivals and to do other things until this job came up here. TT: What's the attraction of a job like this? SP: I find it very interesting to use public money to try to make a difference to the way the capitalist market wants to make things happen. You need public money to nudge the boat in different directions. That's what I'm trying to do here. I still believe in the benefits of European partners. There is a long dependence of Irish Cinema on the British which needs to be broken --we need to get over the post-colonial relationship. I believe that Irish film makers will be better equipped to make their films if they have partners elsewhere in Europe as well in the UK and the US of course. TT: I have to smile when I hear the 2nd British Chief Executive of the Irish Film Board saying that we have to get over our post-colonial relationship with Britain! …
Our Fathers
Routledge eBooks, Nov 30, 2022
Ageing Masculinities in Contemporary European and Anglophone Cinema
Routledge eBooks, Nov 30, 2022
Wedded to the land? Representations of rural ageing masculinities in Irish culture and society
Journal of Aging Studies, Dec 1, 2022
Ageing Masculinities in Irish Literature and Visual Culture
Routledge eBooks, May 26, 2022
Wedded to the land? Representations of rural ageing masculinities in Irish culture and society
Journal of Aging Studies
Historical Dictionary of Irish Cinema
Reference Reviews, 2008
HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF RODERICK FLYNN and PATRICK BRERETON ... Historical Dictionaries of Liter... more HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF RODERICK FLYNN and PATRICK BRERETON ... Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts Jon Woronoff, Series Editor 1. Science Fiction Literature, by Brian Stableford, 2004. 2. Hong Kong Cinema, by Lisa Odham Stokes, ...
Estudios Irlandeses, 2006
estudios irlandeses, 2023
The Irish Are Coming: Irish Film and Television in 2015
Journal of Irish Studies, 2016
Irish Film and Television – 2017. Introduction: Waking the Film Makers: Diversity and Dynamism in Irish Screen Industries 2017
Journal of Irish Studies, 2018
Quantifying National Cinema: A Case Study of the Irish Film Board 1993–2013
Film Studies, 2016
This article sets out to reinvigorate national cinema studies in an Irish context through a quant... more This article sets out to reinvigorate national cinema studies in an Irish context through a quantitative analysis of films financed by the Irish Film Board between 1993 and 2013. In constructing and coding a database of titles produced with the aid of state finance during this period, the authors argue for a methodology that broadens the inductive approaches of textual analysis that have dominated discussions of Irish cinema to date. By establishing recurring genres, narrative patterns, themes and character types present in IFB-funded films during this period, this article demonstrates how the professional objectives of IFB personnel have shaped institutional funding outcomes.
Estudios Irlandeses, 2011
Estudios Irlandeses, 2007
Estudios Irlandeses, Mar 15, 2012
I Used to Live Here (Frank Berry 2015)
Journal of Irish Studies, 2016
Frank Berry is an emerging Irish-film maker who received widespread praise for his preceding, deb... more Frank Berry is an emerging Irish-film maker who received widespread praise for his preceding, debut film, the feature-length documentary Ballymun Lullaby (2011) (reviewed in Estudios Irlandeses 7). (1) Building on several years of community film-making experience, that film followed a local community music project commissioned to mark the regeneration of Ireland's least loved social experiment: the Ballymun tower blocks scheme. The film's formal conventionality (primarily a series of interviews interspersed with footage of rehearsals) belied the energy of its message of hope and renewal, incarnated by dynamic music teacher Ron Cooney, who inspires his young singers to rise above the everyday circumstances of their lives through song. Berry's film did a major service in overhauling Ballymun's persistent on-screen depiction as a social failure evident in films such as Pigs (1984), Into the West (1992) and Adam and Paul (2004). Its infectious energy and life-affirming p...
IRISH FILM AND TELEVISION - 2010 The Year in Review
Introduction In 2010 Ireland's reputation as a modern, progressive economy reached a nadir un... more Introduction In 2010 Ireland's reputation as a modern, progressive economy reached a nadir unimaginable even a year ago. Over the past twelve months, increasingly negative assessments of the country's political and economic acumen became commonplace in the national and then international media. (1) At official levels, Ireland's resilient cultural activity--often spurned or taken for granted in the years of the Celtic Tiger--emerged as a 'gold standard' of national identity and a key instrument in forging internal cohesion (in the absence of the Catholic Church which had another annus horribilis), creating jobs, and rehabilitating our international reputation. In January 2011, Culture Ireland launched Imagine Ireland, a year of Irish Arts in America (http://www.imagineireland.ie). Clearly an outcome of the Farmleigh Conference discussed in these pages last year, the initiative can be read as an attempt to 'monetizing culture' (as Dermot Desmond put it then...
The Other Side of Sleep (2011)
Beyond the abnormally high instance of male crises narratives that dominate recent Irish film out... more Beyond the abnormally high instance of male crises narratives that dominate recent Irish film output (Parked, Savage, Sensation, Rewind, The Guard,) and genre cycles (notably horror) IFB/RTE funding has in recent years facilitated the emergence of a heretofore underexplored setting that has been absent and even reviled by Irish audiovisual media: the midlands. This is a broad church ranging from Garage, Eamon, Eden, the creative documentary His and Hers and the TV series Pure Mule. To this list we can now add Rebecca Daly's confident debut feature The Other Side of Sleep. A defining characteristic of these midland narratives is their contemporary setting in towns outside of the traditional rural / urban axis which take Ireland's interior as an expressive setting of indeterminacy and transition, albeit in often quite different ways. Stylistically they deliberately depart from the tourist gaze tradition of Ireland on film or generic conventions in an often meditative perceptio...
I'm not a big fan of Irish movies, I don't find them to be technically that accomplished ... more I'm not a big fan of Irish movies, I don't find them to be technically that accomplished and I don't find them that intelligent. So I'm trying to get away from the description of the movie as an Irish film in a way. John Michael McDonagh, 2014 When John Michael McDonagh's off-hand comments during promotional duties for Calvary were picked up by Irish Times journalist Donald Clarke in September 2014 (Clarke 2014), they provided a timely intervention for academics beginning courses on Irish cinema and provoked an inevitable--and at times inevitably simplistic - backlash across Irish print and broadcast media that bordered--as McDonagh later charged--on thinly veiled xenophobia. (1) In a subsequent statement that put the question of Irishness and its 'privileges' at the centre of the debate, the writer/director defended his comments and his right to make them by saying: ... I was intentionally trying to position Calvary for an international audience. I didn&...
Adaptations: Tara Road and Breakfast on Pluto
Journal of Irish Studies, 2006
... not embarrassing 500000. The film was unusual in the prominence it gave two female leads (An... more ... not embarrassing 500000. The film was unusual in the prominence it gave two female leads (Andie McDowell and Olivia Williams), relegating male characters to the fringeswith the exception of the 'almost'affairs. It was 3. Tara ...
IRISH JOURNAL OF ARTS MANAGEMENT AND CULTURAL POLICY, 2025