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The films of Margaret Currivan (1923-1985) are home movies at first glance - they capture personal memories and document family events and rituals of the Currivan family during the 1950s and 1960s, with twenty-four films capturing family holidays around Ireland, children’s birthdays, and communions (O’Connell, 2021).
In addition to this, Margaret Currivan was a creative and innovative filmmaker, crafting carefully edited, artistic home movies that demonstrate an artistic bent. Currivan entered her films into Dublin Amateur Cine Society competitions, winning awards for her 8mm documentaries during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
A Day to Remember (1963). Courtesy of the Irish Film Archive
Most of the films show Currivan’s husband Patrick Joseph (PJ) and her children Helen, Dan and Paddy engaged in many family activities. Currivan’s passion for filmmaker was perhaps in part facilitated by the family business in Crumlin, Dublin, a photographic supply shop that sold and processed film (de Bréadún, 2004; Evening Herald, 1961: 17).
Currivan, therefore, had access to film itself and the means to have it developed and during a relatively short timeframe (the films in the collection are of the period 1954 - 1966) demonstrated a degree of technical accomplishment not usually attributed to home movies.
Currivan’s films capture the children in their youth and many of the films are concerned with periodising their lives through key events like birthdays, Christmases, visits with relatives and visits to holiday homes and other popular tourist locations across Ireland.
Occasionally, Currivan herself appears in these films, alluding to partial recording undertaken by PJ who also made films outside of the family (Irish Railway Record Society, 2015). However, the films are largely attributed to Margaret Currivan who was said to be the avid filmmaker of the family (Young, 2014: 88-90).
The films themselves appear as highly choreographed, with scenes carefully staged for the camera. For example, in a film titled Up the Canal (c.1961) a sequence of Helen making a daisy chain is edited to condense time, with a voice over stating “daisies were very much sought after, for their heads, when strung together, made pretty necklaces and bracelets.” This demonstrates a sense of narrative and filmic time and an understanding of how to use the craft of editing to generate narrative.
In a 2013 interview with her son, Dan, he stressed the creativity of his mother, noting that “My mother did all the editing herself – that I remember – as she did explain to me how she did it, running the film on a manual reel to reel device with a viewfinder, then cutting and splicing the film as she went” (Currivan in Young, 2014: 90). Indeed, the extent of editing of the films suggests someone eager to curate and narrate as much as document events.
This reference to Currivan’s editing is an important one as it helps to confirm her authorship of the films which might otherwise be difficult to ascertain. Since some films feature Currivan in front of the camera and the film records of the Irish Film Archive state that “Some rolls [were] filmed by her husband PJ” (IFA Currivan Collection Filmographic, 2021), knowledge of the time spent working on editing the films helps to establish her as author of the work.
Currivan is not merely shooting footage, she is crafting the story of the family over time. This sense of the craft of filmmaking appears in a variety of forms including the use of titles and inter-titles to explain and contextualise events, the hand-made film fades that appear in the films, the use of different plains of action within a frame and the use of soundtrack and voice over. All of these creative treatments evidence that Currivan’s films were as much crafted in post-production processes and practices as they were in the actual recording of the films.
Currivan had two award-winning films, which were entered into annual Dublin Amateur Cine Society competitions. The Irish Times, 13 April 1961, recorded her as winning first prize in the ‘Film Shows Cup’ run by the Society for her film Up the Canal. In a series of competitions entered largely by male filmmakers, this was perhaps no mean feat and a testament to the quality of her poetic documentary about life and activities on the Grand Canal in Dublin.
Her award was also documented in the newspaper the Evening Herald, which included a photo of her holding her award (Evening Herald, 1961: 6). In 1963 and again at the Dublin Amateur Cine Society’s annual event, Currivan won in a wider body of entries from male filmmakers, this time in the Founder’s Cup and for her film A Day to Remember which documents the communion of daughter Helen, with a voice over narration from Helen describing her experience of the day.
Filmography
1955. Margaret Currivan Collection: Reel 17. Irish Film Archive.
A Day to Remember (1963). Margaret Currivan Collection: Reel 23. Irish film Archive.
Athlone, Easter 1955 (1955). Margaret Currivan Collection: Reel 18. Irish Film Archive.
Lough Ree (1959). Margaret Currivan Collection: Reel 12. Irish Film Archive.
Up the Canal (1961). Margaret Currivan Collection: Reel 23. Irish film Archive.
Xmas 1957 (1957). Margaret Currivan Collection: Reel 14. Irish Film Archive.
Bibliography
de Bréadún, Deaglán. 2004. ‘I like to think he was asleep.’ Irish Times. 11 September. [Online] Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/i-like-to-think-he-was-asleep-1.1157234 [Accessed 30 November 2022].
Evening Herald. 1961. All In Processing Service. 29 September, p. 17.
Evening Herald. 1961. Mrs M Currivan, who won the Film Show Cup, and Mr. W.D.E. Robinson, winner of the Gevaert Cup at the Dublin Amateur Cine Society annual dinner in C.I.E. Club, Dublin. 13 April, p. 6.
Irish Film Archive. 2021. Currivan Collection Filmographic. Dublin, Ireland.
Irish Railway Record Society. 2015. GNR(I) – Harmonstown Station opens (1957). [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzcnUhYxo5E [Accessed 30 November 2022].
Irish Times. 1961. Cine Society Awards Presented. 13 April, p. 7.
Irish Times. 1963. Winning Films Shown at Dinner. 25 April, p. 6.
O’Connell, Kasandra. 2020. Archivally Absent? Female Filmmakers in the IFI Irish Film Archive. In Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, no. 20, pp. 12–27.
Young, Gwenda. 2014. Glimpses of a Hidden History: Exploring Irish Amateur Collections, 1930–70. In Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young & Barry Monahan (Eds.) Amateur Filmmaking: The Home Movie, the Archive, the Web. London: Bloomsbury.