(Forthcoming) Hollywood hurling? Gaelic games on film

Gaelic games have featured on film from the earliest days of the cinema in Ireland. In fact, as early as 1901 the Irish Animated Photo Company filmed a Cullens Challenge Cup hurling game between Rovers and Grocers played at Jones Road now Croke Park on Sunday 8 December that year, a film that was screened as part of a Grand Gaelic Night at the Rotunda on Parnell Street the following Wednesday.1 In subsequent years, Gaelic games have repeatedly provided filmmakers with a resonant motif to represent perceived aspects of Irish identity, perceived as these representations have been neither straightforward nor unproblematic. In international productions in particular, Gaelic games have been employed on occasion as a short hand for regressive stereotypes associated with Irish people, including their alleged propensity for violence. For indigenous producers, on the other hand, Gaelic games afforded distinctive Irish cultural practices and were employed to promote and affirm the Irish nation, particularly as an indigenous film culture began to develop in the aftermath of World War II. From the late 1960s onwards, a critical turn became evident in these indigenous productions though contemporary depictions of Gaelic games still occasionally reveal the more problematic stereotypes associated with Ireland and Irish identity.