IFI Cork on Camera: Gearrscannáin Louis Marcus

Cork-born Louis Marcus began his film career in Dublin in 1958 as assistant editor on Mise Éire and Saoirse?, and made his own first film The Silent Art in 1959 about the Cork sculptor, Seamus Murphy RHA. In the 1960s Marcus played a key role in the development of an Irish film industry. Over the course of his career he has made over 80 documentaries, garnering 20 international festival awards, exploring Irish social life, industry, history and the arts.

In 1995 he received the Irish Film Institute’s Annual Award, and in 2005, at the 50th Cork Film Festival, he was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award and a retrospective of his work.

We present here Marcus’s films made for Irish language body Gael Linn. All were filmed on 35mm by his longtime friend and collaborator Bob Monks and were screened in cinemas nationwide. All are now preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive.

RHAPSODY OF A RIVER

Louis Marcus | Ireland | 1965 | 10 mins

Conceived by two Cork natives, Louis Marcus and Seán Ó Ríada, as a romantic tribute to Cork city and county and the River Lee. Capturing the city’s busy streets, cattle marts in Bandon and impressive feats of engineering at Whitegate, Inniscarra, and Verolme. These eloquent images are accompanied solely by Ó Ríada’s majestic score.

FLEÁ CEOIL

Louis Marcus | Ireland | 1967 | 25 mins | Subtitled

In this wry snapshot of Irish life at the West Clare Fleadh in 1966, musicians and onlookers gather to enjoy the music, the jug-poured porter, the crubeens and the craic. Marcus and Monks revel in the close observation of small details to create an intensely energetic montage which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

POBAL

Louis Marcus | Ireland | 1970 | 25 mins | Subtitled

Pobal is a vibrant panoramic work with a sweeping Ó Ríada score which celebrates the strong sense of community which pervades Irish life in the late ‘60s. Shot in Cork, Mayo, Dublin, the Aran Islands and elsewhere, Pobal presents a rich tapestry of observation and commentary, infused with Marcus’s delightful sense of irony.

PÁISTÍ AG OBAIR

Louis Marcus | Ireland | 1973 | 10 mins

Louis Marcus’s observational documentary Páistí ag Obair (Children at Work) celebrates the successes of children learning through play in Irish Montessori schools in the 1970s with a voiceover, in both Irish and English. The film made in three schools in Dublin and Wicklow was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short in 1973.

All films produced by Gael Linn.