The Loopline Collection
The Loopline Collection is a treasure trove of documentary now stored in the Irish Film Archive with selected titles available on to screen free on the IFI Player.The films and outtakes were chosen by Sé Merry Doyle for their cultural and social importance. The archiving process took one year to complete and was supervised by the renowned archivist Eugene Finn. The Loopline Collection covers key areas of Irish history and arts, and contains a wealth of stunning images revealing everyday Irish society in urban settings. The focus of the filmmaker is on national identity in a changing world. The collection contains a large quantity of urban material that chronicles the changing landscape of Dublin, its buildings and its citizen’s ways of life. The films include such historically resonant images as the clearance of slums, the closure of traditional markets, and tragic accounts of young teenagers dying from the heroin epidemic of the early 90’s.
Merry Doyle’s body of work has focused on the lives of architects, sculptors filmmakers and poets like Patrick Kavanagh, Jimmy Murakami, John Henry Foley, James Gandon, and Robin Walker. Social realism is also a big part of Merry Doyle’s work with titles like his focus on Dublin Street Traders “Alive Alive O- A Requiem for Dublin’ and “The Knotting Ring” were his engagement with elder Irish women in London reveals harrowing stories of people who fled an Ireland that was out of step with their civil rights.
The following article from the arts magazine Cassandra Voices is an overview of what is available in the collection by Eugene Finn
https://ifiplayer.ie/loopline/
