Making Visible Cinema Memories: New Approaches to Cinema-Going Research

With a focus on the opportunities and challenges of New Cinema History approaches, this panel explores the history of cinema-going in Ireland from the 1910s up to the 1990s. It investigates the significance of cinema-going and film in the everyday lives of Irish people through a combination of archival and oral history research practices.
Research on audiences in the past is challenging, particularly in the case of historical audiences in periods beyond living memory. In the first paper, Denis Condon explores the degree to which archival research and other methodologies of the New Cinema History can illuminate Irish audiences of the 1910s.

In the second paper, Sarah Culhane draws on oral history testimony (questionnaires and video-interviews) gathered as part of the Irish Cinema Audiences: 1950-1960 project to examine the distribution and exhibition of European religious films in urban and rural contexts.

Using the Cork Movie Memories project as a case study, in the third paper on this panel Gwenda Young and Dan O’Connell explore how creative practice and the principles of open access can be applied to conducting and presenting research on cinema-going experiences and memories.