Gloucester Street – Lenny Abrahamson Filmmaker Playlist
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Our inaugural playlist, curated by director Lenny Abrahamson – renowned for his multi-Academy Award nominated Room (2015) and acclaimed independent films like Adam & Paul (2004), Garage (2007), What Richard Did (2012) and Frank (2014) – visits the Irish Film Institute to select his top picks of materials preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive from the IFI Player.
The films he has selected—from early stop-motion playfulness in Clock Tower Animation (1910s) to homemade sci-fi/horror by cinema-enthusiasts the Spence twins – span decades and counties, but all demonstrate a fascination and experimentation with film and story-telling that informs his unique way of seeing the world.
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Gloucester Street (which became Seán McDermott Street in 1933) is alive with activity: children play and grapple for the camera’s attention; teachers play school yard games with students and women reluctantly pose for camera. Moments in time are captured in a heavily-populated, inner-city Dublin neighbourhood. The tenement dwellings here were later demolished after Dublin Corporation purchased them in 1941.
Father Jack Delaney (1906-1980) was ordained in 1930 at the age of 24 and served as a parish priest in Dublin in the 1930s and 1940s. He served mainly around Seán McDermott Street (then Gloucester Street), Rutland Street and Gardiner Street. His films offer a fascinating glimpse of life at the time in inner-city Dublin and include scenes of trips with parishioners, tenement life, school children at play, religious processions, and residents of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity Convent (which housed a Magdalene Laundry).
Father Jack Delaney (1906-1980) was ordained in 1930 at the age of 24 and served as a parish priest in Dublin in the 1930s and 1940s. He served mainly around Seán McDermott Street (then Gloucester Street), Rutland Street and Gardiner Street. His films offer a fascinating glimpse of life at the time in inner-city Dublin and include scenes of trips with parishioners, tenement life, school children at play, religious processions, and residents of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity Convent (which housed a Magdalene Laundry).