Outsider Cinema: Independent and Amateur Filmmaking in Northern Ireland, 1929-1989

The portrayal of Ireland on screen has been problematic due to a lack of a sustained indigenous film industry before the establishment of the Irish Film Board in 1980 and the Northern Ireland Film Council in 1989. However, before this, many talented and proficient non-professional filmmakers were capturing events that hold valuable clues to an internal social and historical perspective on twentieth-century Ireland.

Northern Ireland has a rich heritage of amateur and independent cinema that includes several prolific filmmakers and collectives. Many of these image makers garnered awards on the prestigious international independent film circuit and had their work shown in film festivals and on television. Crucially, they offered an alternative and illuminating view to the mainstream-cinema and broadcast-media imagery of a conflicted region that was often filmed but little understood. They also laid the groundwork for the vibrant film culture that exists in Northern Ireland today. This book will offer the first scholarly exploration of these ‘cine auteurs’.