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Post-Agreement Cinema: The Northern Ireland Conflict in Contemporary British and Irish Screen Cultures Abstract Film and television production in Northern Ireland has experienced significant shifts since the Peace Agreement was signed in 1998. During this time, major changes in views of the Northern Ireland conflict in other parts of the British Isles have emerged. This project will analyse the landscape of contemporary film and television across the UK and Ireland with a particular focus on inter-regional productions that engage with the conflict’s legacy. As well as major publications and a vlog, outputs will include curating an exhibition of visual art relevant to the project and a series of film screenings with talks. Details of current and past research My research interests lie in contemporary film and visual culture focusing on conflict and post-conflict themes. I am drawn to convergences between cinema and visual art, particularly inv...

Part 1 Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Reconfiguring Time and Place A number of years before the resurgence of Belfast’s live music scene in the early 2000s and the more widespread simultaneous nostalgia for punk, vintage and vinyl that has emerged and grown since, Duncan Campbell’s video installation Falls Burns Malone Fiddles (2003) captures the intensity of the working class youth culture in the 1970s and 1980s that gathered around energetic live music and was fuelled by an ethos of dissent against distension. The video’s title derives from a phrase commonly seen in graffiti in Belfast during the conflict, and is indicative of class tensions between different areas of the city. This same class tension, or more specifically, anger against privilege, emerges in much of the punk lyrics of the time. 1 The images in Campbell’s work consist of photographs from the time held in the Belfast Exposed photographic gallery’s archives. It gives movement to still pho...

Film scholars Andrew Shail and Arnojya Shree discuss Tamasha (dir. Imtiaz Ali, 2015). With occasional swearing and brief mention of abusive relationships. Music: commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/58703 Recorded on Zoom Instagram Live Edited by Paula Blair with Audacity Kdenlive Join the pod at https://www.patreon.com/avcultures or support via https://www.buymeacoffee.com/peablair

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3   Remediating the past Bearing in mind the nostalgic tone of Good Vibrations , some of its sequences can also facilitate critical re-evaluation of the past. Its opening implements accelerated archival footage showcasing Northern Ireland’s products and industries that then capture the sense of nation-/region-hood beginning to fragment as collectives splinter off in the transition to civil conflict. While No economically tells the politics of Chile’s recent past, Good Vibrations shows two decades of Northern Ireland’s industrial, cultural, religious and political histories. Both of these compressed accounts serve as backdrops to the individual men on which the films centre, with René and Terri both embodying the fictionalized truths the films (re)present. Whereas Good Vibrations uses the archive to show Northern Ireland’s transition into conflict, the opening sequence in No consists of text outlining a brief contextual synopsis of the 1973 mili...

Part 1 Part 2 Rewriting the Self A contrast between Good Vibrations and No lies in the points of view from which they are told. From the outset it is clear that Good Vibrations is Terri Hooley’s story told in a n oral storytelling fashion – spinning a yarn, as we say in Ulster . The film is a series of memories depicted through a fanzine cut-and-paste collage of archival materials (amongst which I include the original recordings of the bands’ songs as well as television footage and radio archives) and original footage filmed with anamorphic lenses. The slightly skewed and blurred appearance with a lean to the right visually emphasizes Terri’s narrow vision in more ways than one; as well as missing his left eye, he fails to see how his actions affect those around him. Although No closely follows René, this fictionalization is neither biographical nor autobiographical as the character individualizes the larger team behind the more extensive No campaign. In a way, though, i...