In the 1920s, '30s and '40s, the GAA organised annual tours to the US to promote hurling and Gaelic football.
The visits, often covered by newsreels, inspired several major studios to make short films about both sports, but Hollywood’s depiction of Irish sport and culture was not always welcomed back home.
In this “Ireland’s athletic assault and battery?” Hollywood and Hurling, Dr Seán Crosson of NUI Galway presents a series of Warner Bros, MGM and Paramount films, some only recently acquired by the IFI Irish Film Archive and shown here for the first time in Ireland since the 1930s.
From the 1936 film Hurling, which prompted a deputation from the GAA to demand cuts from the Irish censor, to the Oscar-nominated Three Kisses – a film featuring the legendary Cork hurling team of the 1950s – Dr Crosson examines how Irish sports were represented in Hollywood, and traces the evolution of Irish identity onscreen.
Dr Seán Crosson is programme director of the MA/PGDip in Film Studies at the Huston School of Film & Digital Media in NUI, Galway.
His current research project, examining the representation of sport in film, is the subject of several recent publications and a monograph, Sport and Film, to be published by Routledge in 2011.
Programme details; Ted Husing’s Sport Slants (1931 ) Episode 4; Ted Husing’s Sport Thrills (1932 ) Episode 5; Hurling (1936 ); Three Kisses (1955 ); Foreign Sports in the US (1959 ).
This event takes place on Monday August 9, at 7pm at Langton’s Set Theatre. Tickets are €13 / €11. Special offer ticket deal available! Get tickets to this very special event and tickets to the ‘The County Sessions’ (on straight after Hollywood and Hurling in Langton’s Set Theatre ) for only €27.
