Summer Screenings: Ireland: The Tear and the Smile - Part 1

• 
05 August 2016

1pm, Free.
Directed by Willard Van Dyke, 1961, 27 minutes.
Presented in collaboration with the Irish Film Institute. This film is preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive.

The Irish Film Archive of the Irish Film Institute presents Ireland: The Tear and The Smile - Part 1

Designed to introduce American television audiences to contemporary Irish society, Ireland: The Tear and the Smile aimed to provide an accurate picture of everyday life in Ireland in 1960. Presented by TV luminary, Walter Cronkite and written by Irish novelist, Elizabeth Bowen the programme featured contributions from leading political and literary figures - President Eamon de Valera, Taoiseach Seán Lemass, Seán O Faoláin, Siobhán McKenna, Brendan Behan, Nora Connolly O’Brien, and Sybil Connolly. The interviews were punctuated with images of urban and rural life, Dublin pub scenes, gambling, hardship in the west of Ireland, and harrowing scenes of emigration.

Upon broadcast in early 1961, the programmes were met with disapproval by Irish diplomats in the US who argued that they presented Ireland as a “a poverty- stricken country riddled with backwardness, unemployment and emigration”. A misleading distortion of a modern, progressive nation or a valuable, critical reflection on an economically and politically challenged society? We invite you to judge.