Irish Film Institute, Dublin

announces the IFI Archive Player presentation of

A Retrospective Collection of the Innovative Amateur Filmmaker’s Acclaimed Animation and Live-Action Work

Available Now
Via http://www.ifiarchiveplayer.ie/flora-kerrigan

Images and Trailer free to use across all media can be downloaded HERE

Click to watch the collection trailer.

October 23rd 2025: The Irish Film Institute (IFI), Dublin is thrilled to announce the release of a retrospective celebrating the highly skilled amateur filmmaker Flora Kerrigan, including films from the 1950s and 1960s which have only recently resurfaced; the films are now available to screen worldwide for free on the IFI Archive Player. This collection is presented with a new music accompaniment by renowned avant-garde free-improvisational pianist Paul G. Smyth and double bass virtuoso John Edwards.

This highly imaginative selection of films not only demonstrates an impressive technical prowess, both through animation and live action, but also offers engagingly profound and playful explorations of the existential self, with themes of death and desire weaving their way through the works. Aesthetically mesmerizing, the films present a singular wit through deft editing and surreal adventures in mid-20th-century Cork and beyond. Kerrigan’s work notably presents rare touchstones in the history of Irish animation and female desire, at a time with few known examples of Irish work in these areas.

Kerrigan’s live-action films are absurd, comedic, haunting and, most strikingly, explore female sexuality. The collection’s titular Dream Maker explores the relationship between two young women in a tender play of furtive glances, sensual interactions and hesitations. It’s a striking piece, and one of the few known Irish amateur films by a woman that offers such an intimate and dream-like portrayal of female characters.

Kasandra O’Connell, Head of IFI Irish Film Archive said: 

“The recent discovery of Flora Kerrigan’s remarkable experimental filmmaking has prompted us to reassess our understanding of the history of Irish filmmaking, as both archivists and academics. Kerrigan’s inventive and provocative work upends our previous ideas about animation, amateur filmmaking, and the work of women filmmakers in an Irish context. The IFI Irish Film Archive is passionate about locating and celebrating the contribution of women within the cultural landscape and we acknowledge the importance of collaborating with the academic sector in order to carry out crucial research. In this regard working with Research Ireland, Dr. Sarah Arnold of Maynooth University and Dr Keith M. Johnston of the University of East Anglia has been pivotal. Funding from ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes and the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme has enabled us to present the collection online with an evocative score by avant garde musicians Paul G. Smyth and John Edwards. The ongoing support of the Kerrigan family has been vital in allowing us to preserve Flora’s work, tell her story, and share her extraordinary talent with new audiences.”

The release of this collection and access to these films is a direct result of their rediscovery through the collaborative research project ‘Women in Focus: Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata and Cataloguing’ led by Kasandra O’Connell, Head of the IFI Irish Film Archive, Keith M. Johnston of the University of East Anglia, and Sarah Arnold of Maynooth University. This project produced a cataloguing toolkit for creating more effective, useful and accessible records of women or amateur filmmakers.

Kerrigan’s amazing contribution to Irish amateur filmmaking had fallen into obscurity in the intervening years since her creative period. However, during the project, researchers reviewed old amateur film magazines for award submissions, and Kerrigan’s name began to pop up. Her work had been recognized at international competitions for amateur work, such as The Seventh Day and Discord at the Ten Best awards. Further research into the Irish newspaper archive connected Kerrigan, born in Cork in 1940, to her time as an active member of the Cork Cine Club during the late 1950s and 1960s. Over eight years, she crafted remarkable amateur films, earning international accolades and broadcasting on national television.

Dr. Arnold used this information to reach out to Kerrigan’s family, discovering that Flora was 83 and now living in Roscommon. She had maintained a personal archive which contained 66 cans of 8mm film, 2 cans of 16mm film, 1 roll of unprocessed 35mm still camera negatives of work, and more, looking after her films and minding them carefully in Cork and London, bringing them home when she returned to Ireland. The films were thus brought to the attention of both Dr. Arnold and Kasandra O’Connell and are now preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive. While some were damaged, this online collection represents their work in the preservation of Irish film history, with these incredible films digitized and made accessible worldwide via the IFI Archive Player.

Kerrigan’s filmmaking life appears to have ended when she moved to London in the late 1960s. However, she pursued a creative life, taking photographs and becoming involved in activism through the Women’s Liberation Movement. She also wrote poetry under the pseudonym Eamer O’Keefe, where some of her earlier themes and her interest in graphics and typography elements were carried through from her filmmaking.

The surreal playfulness of Kerrigan’s animations belies the painstaking meticulousness of their production. While animation has become a trademark of Irish cinema on a global scale, Kerrigan’s work was made independently at a time where most examples were state-funded or RTÉ produced. Speaking to The Cork Examiner in 1961, Kerrigan explained that “it takes almost 2,000 cut-outs for a two-minute cartoon… it’s work that requires infinite patience, but it is very satisfying and less expensive than ordinary filmmaking.” A contemporary review of Moonshine, broadcast with a selection of her films by RTÉ in 1965, assessed it as “an extremely witty little piece of interplanetary whimsy dealing with the history of space exploration” (9 April 1965).

SUPPORT
Restored with support from ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes and the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme as part of A Season of Classic Films 2024.