- Poitín (Film)
Infobox Film
name = Poitín
caption =
director =Bob Quinn
producer =Bob Quinn
writer =Colm Bairéad
starring =Cyril Cusack Donal McCann Niall Toibin
music =
cinematography =Seamus Deasy
editing =Bob Quinn
distributor =Cine Gael
released =1977
runtime = 65 min.
country =Ireland
language = Irish
budget =
gross =
website = http://www.conamara.org/poitin.htm
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0079732"Poitín" (1977) was the first feature film to be made entirely in the
Irish language . It was also the first recipient of a film script grant from theArts Council of Ireland .Plot
The film was produced by
Cinegael , written and directed byBob Quinn , and starredCyril Cusack as a moonshiner in ruralConamara , living in an isolated cottage with his adult daughter. Two local degenerates, played byDonal McCann andNiall Toibin , terrorize the old moonshiner for his contraband liquor, threatening to kill him and rape his daughter, until the moonshiner outwits them and tricks them to their deaths.Response
The film first aired to the Irish public on
RTÉ on Saint Patrick's Day in 1979 and caused a national outrage. Taken by many as a direct insult to the idealized Western Irish identity, particularly pointing to the "spud fight" scene in the film, criticism echoed the response toJohn Millington Synge 's stageplay "The Playboy of the Western World " (the "Playboy Riots") some seventy years earlier and the reaction toFlann O'Brien 's Irish language novel "An Béal Bocht " some forty years prior, both of which also played on Irish stereotypes, of whichIrish nationalists are sensitive.ee also
Poitín External links
* [http://www.conamara.org/poitin.htm Details on director's webpage]
*Jerry White, [http://www.conamara.org/essay.htm#Poitin "The Films of Bob Quinn: Towards an Irish third Cinema"]
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