![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
We employ a practice-based methodology based on a ‘live’ film project to explore the different ways that film-makers and historians narrate the past. Through a case-study of the production and exhibition of a drama-documentary feature-film, The Enigma of Frank Ryan, on which both authors (film-maker Bell and historian McGarry) worked respectively as director and historical consultant, we explore a range of critical issues arising from our collaboration. Through a dialogue between a director and a historian, a model of good practice between historians and film-makers emerges.
Notes
1. Email: [email protected]
2. The film premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in February 2012 before being screened in the world cinema section of the Montreal Festival des Film du Monde in August 2012. An Irish-language version, Duchéist Frank Ryan, was broadcast by TG4 in April 2014.
3. Several film-makers have been attracted to Ryan's story, in part because of its tragic elements, but also because of the enigmatic nature of Ryan's motivations. A character based on Ryan figures in The Eagle has Landed (the 1976 film directed by John Sturges which stars Donald Sutherland as Liam Devlin, the Ryan cypher). Subsequent attempts to film Ryan's story failed due to financing difficulties although he has been the subject of songs, poetry, novels and several documentaries, the most substantial being Joe Mulholland's Let my tombstone be of granite (Citation1979).
4. The dialogues that follow have been edited for clarity and concision. For a recorded (and rather less lucid) dialogue, see: Accessed July 1, 2014. www.qub.ac.uk/sites/frankryan/InterpretativeResources/CriticalIssues/.
5. See: Accessed July 1, 2014. www.qub.ac.uk/sites/frankryan.
6. A striking example of this was the American Historical Review's May 2006 decision to end its policy of reviewing individual films, in part due to its reviewers’ lack of expertise in the medium of film. As its editor, Robert A. Schneider noted (in the May issue): ‘When historians review films, they usually write about what they know about – accuracy, verisimilitude, and pedagogical usefulness. These are not inconsiderable as commentary, but it is a far cry from what we expect from them in a book review.’ See: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2006/on-film-reviews-in-the-ahr.
7. See: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://youtu.be/9nIunjiI6mA.
8. See: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://youtu.be/Fed4xZs-nYY.
9. For key dramatized scenes from the film see: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://enigmafrankryan.com/videos/.
10. See: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://youtu.be/Y5ybReyywGc.
11. Available at: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/frankryan/FilmandtheCommunicationofHistoricalKnowledge/TheEnigmaofFrankRyan/.
12. I was greatly assisted in this by Bonny Rowan, a US-based picture-researcher who largely works on the Library of Congress and National Archives (NARA) film collections.
13. See: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/frankryan/Archivaldialogues/SeanRussellandFrankRyanandthesoulofrepublicanism/.
14. See: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://youtu.be/kEhKiePTg64.
15. Bodenstown, the site of Wolfe Tone's grave, witnesses annual commemorative marches by Irish republicans. June 1934 saw a skirmish between the IRA and supporters of the left-wing Republican Congress.
16. See: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/frankryan/ArchivalDialogues.
17. In its Irish context, this term refers to the historiographical tradition that emerged out of Irish universities during the last century, largely in opposition to the dominant popular nationalist narratives that it tended to set itself against. Revisionist approaches were further influenced from the 1970s by the conflict in Northern Ireland which saw the IRA seek to legitimize its violence through recourse to popular nationalist historical narratives.
18.Irish Democrat, 16 September 2011.
19. For critical responses see: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/frankryan/InterpretativeResources/. See also McGarry and Bell (Citation2012).
20. See: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/frankryan/Archivaldialogues/ImaginingRyaninBerlin/.
21. See: Accessed July 1, 2014. http://youtu.be/woayFvU3xQA.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Desmond Bell
Desmond Bell is Head of Academic Affairs and Research at National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He has directed several films for television and cinema including Child of the Dead End (2009) Rebel Frontier (2005) and Hard Road to Klondike (1999).
Fearghal McGarry
Fearghal McGarry teaches history at Queen's University Belfast. He is the author of The Rising. Ireland: Easter 1916 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010) and Frank Ryan (Dublin: University College Dublin Press 2011).