were fortunate with our contributions that the pieces just started to fit together. It was quite exciting. The archive was interesting. You don't get that much footage of Ireland in that period. Then 1916 and the First World War it's a period that's almost bereft of real footage.
Thankfully the IFI Archive has recently launched the Independence Collection which restored a number of short films from that period. It was such a formative time for our nation. And we had some of our greatest historical figures all co-existing in Dublin at that time.
It's one of the things that attracted me to the project. Ireland in the 1900's, I didn't know enough about it. In school we weren't taught about it. We were taught about 1916 but I don't think we learned enough about how we handed over our revolution to the Catholic church and how we dullified after 1920. When you look at the energy of Hugh, at the energy of Yeats, the energy of Lady Gregory, of Cecilia Harrison, who I'm now obsessed with. And what they were doing and how Dublin was as Rory says the intellectual excitement and the second city of the so-called Empire. And we just gave it to McQuaid and to de Valera who just squished the cultural out of us. I really think that we are just coming out of it now. And then there was a housing crisis like now. It's staggering how we repeat ourselves. That argument over art and culture and social issues it's still very alive.
Art and culture are usually the first victims of austerity unfortunately.
Arts, culture and education staggeringly. The things we all really need to sustain us.
Having experience this would you like to do more period dramas or documentaries?
I'm delving more into that period now. I'm listening to opera, to Margaret Burke Sheridan, and again she was in the same period. All of that excitement in Ireland at the time I am very fascinated with now.
CinÉireann also caught up with actress Lesley Conroy who plays Ms Sarah Cecilia Harrison, known to her friends as Celia. Harrison is best known for her complex relationship with Hugh Lane.
The mix of documentary and drama is an interesting one.
Yes it was and on the night of the screening on the 11th they were discussing the journey of the film and at one point they were asking if they could make this as a drama. But there were budgetary constraint so they ploughed ahead with the half and half. In that way it is strange. You very much go into the world of Hugh Lane and the people that he came in touch with and the whole journey of the creation of the gallery. But then you also get all of the other background information from the present-day point of view.
The film offers a window into Hugh Lane and his life, but only in a brief period...
There really wasn't enough time. There were so many things That I would have loved to have seen expanded. I would have loved to more about his family, his relationship with his mother and father. And also his relationship with his friends and what complications may have been there. Was he in love with Orpen? Clearly Celia was in love with him. Was he in love with her back? Unfortunately no. It's great and the audience will get a lovely snapshot, but in another way it's a shame that they couldn't have been developed a bit more. But the beauty of that is that hopefully it will make people go and pick up a book and read about him. Or visit the gallery to have a look at all of these people on the walls and their paintings.
While they are still there and the English don't try to take them back. [Hugh Lane's collection is the subject of a dispute between Ireland and the UK]
36 CinÉireann / May 2018