Denis Murphy

Liverpool University Press, 2024. 266 pages.

ISBN: 9781802075953 (Hardcover)

Denis Murphy’s Screen Workers and the Irish Film Industry presents a remarkable labour-centred study of Irish and Northern Irish screen industries. The book charts the development of Irish screen industries from the opening of Emmet Dalton and Louis Elliman’s Ardmore Studios in 1958 by then Minister for Industry and Commerce Séan Lemass through to the proliferation of present day “local Hollywood nodes” on the island. Denis Murphy uses Toby Miller’s “Global Hollywood” theory on Hollywood dominance and historical, political, and economic successes of Hollywood to situate Ireland’s “local node” status within a web of screen industry globalisation. The chronological structure of the book allows the individual chapters to be read as standalone periods or as a complete analysis of the 1958 to 2023 timeframe. The introduction ensures that earlier scholarly interventions are well-covered, complementing the body of existing work on film, media, television and cinema by Kevin Rockett, Martin McLoone, John Hill, Ruth Barton, Helena Sheehan, John Horgan and Roddy Flynn.

In his analysis of the relationship between state, capital and labour in the screen industries, Denis Murphy presents the often-under-explored experiences of workers, unions, guilds and associations through multiple primary sources including union archives and interviews with current and former industry personnel. Particular attention is paid to the agency of workers and their endeavours to shape their own industries. This book explores their demands on the Irish government from financing a film training school and film archive to determining what kind of films should be financed, whether they be Irish, international, experimental or shorts. A key theme explored throughout is: what constitutes “good work”? Especially if short-term contracts, casualisation and over-supply of labour are the requirements of a low cost and flexible workforce.

Screen Workers and the Irish Film Industry comes at an important time for screen workers in Ireland and Northern Ireland. The COVID-19 film production interruption closely followed by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strikes of 2023 created dual labour market shocks in both jurisdictions. Denis Murphy contextualises the conditions for the Hollywood strikes of 2023, driven largely by technological changes which laid bare the “local node” realities of screen industries in Ireland and Northern Ireland and their relationship to the global Hollywood production.

The author thoughtfully presents examples of pivotal moments from Irish film industry history that changed work and the film industry itself with varying wins and losses along the way. A particular highlight was the impactful commentary on the disparity of appearance and reality in screen and other creative industries employment and how such an idealised form of work with social prestige could impact on material factors such as pay and precarity. This book explores the pivotal moment during the production Of Human Bondage (1964) that led to inter-union dispute and the “freezing out” of Electrical Trades Union Ireland (ETUI) from Ardmore Studios following ETUI’s demands for productions to hire local electricians. Rocky Road to Dublin (1968) is an impactful example of a scenario where local film crews were largely unused, with a foreign crew brought in, with the exception of Peter Lennon, himself an Irishman resident in Paris, and only a sound technician local to Ireland.

A further pivotal moment explored in the book is the 2015 incarnation of the Irish Film Workers Association (IFWA). The IFWA employed energised organising strategies, notably challenging the validity of state Section 481 tax credit for certain productions as it is predicated on the provision of “quality” employment. A third pivotal moment in Irish screen industry history detailed by Denis Murphy is Concorde Anois, the offshoot of Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures. The controversies surrounding the Connemara studio: the working conditions, “film school wages” and Section 35 certification, all of which posed a major threat to both output and labour conditions in the Irish screen industries during the 1990s.
The book also records the contagion from the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the chain of events that determined the future of some productions in Ireland during the 1970s. The example of the abrupt end to the shooting of Barry Lyndon (1975) in Ireland is a fascinating intervention. Denis Murphy pays attention throughout to Northern Ireland; with Irish and Northern Irish screen industries and culture dealt with in parallel throughout the book. The then newly formed Channel 4’s contribution to funding and opportunities for all-island productions such as Hush-a-Bye-Baby (1989) is testament to the work of the Belfast and Derry film and video workshop movement. Their role in nurturing indigenous filmmaking during the Troubles and before the post-Good Friday Agreement dividend of state and inward investment in studio and screen infrastructure in Northern Ireland is detailed and acknowledged in this book.

Furthermore, the author pays attention to not only Irish and Northern Irish, but also British screen policy. From quotas and the Eady levy to the impact of Thatcherism and New Labour on screen industries, British developments are demonstrated to have influenced screen policy and the cyclical nature of investment, industry self-sufficiency and trade union influence in both parts of Ireland.

The book is rich in statistical evidence and filmic examples throughout and is an important and valuable resource. Overall, Screen Workers and the Irish Film Industry is an excellent contribution to the fields of media, screen and cultural industries, the political economy of media and communications, film and cultural history and labour and industrial relations.