Culture
16 Apr 19

Irish Film Institute Unveils First Volume Of The Loopline Collection

The Loopline Collection contains revealing interviews with figures such as Margaret Atwood and Richard Ford, as well as documentaries about prominent Irish cultural figures.

The Irish Film Institute unveiled the first volume of its Loopline Collection, which features unreleased footage of U2 playing on Sheriff Street in 1981.

Influential Irish production company Loopline Film was founded in 1992 by filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle, whose work highlighted prominent cultural figures. In 2015, Merry Doyle and the Irish Film Institute received funding from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland to archive materials of Loopline Film, culminating in the Loopline Collection.

The U2 footage is an extended version of footage the documentary Looking On, which documents a vibrant inner city festival, and is only the tip of the iceberg for material featured in the collection.

Among the films included in the collection are Liam McGratch's Essie's Last Stand, focused on an elderly woman's fight to stay in her home and her apartment block is taken over for redevelopment, and Patrick Kavanagh: No Man's Fool, an examination of the live of the renowned poet and the contributions from other creatives.

The Loopline Collection had already won the prestigious Digital Preservation Coalition Award for its ambitious archival and appraisal efforts, resulting in new custom open source tools, known as IFIScripts.

Now the award-winning project's efforts are available to the public via the free IFI Player platform, and viewers will be able to experience the material alongside never-before-seen outtakes, interviews and more.

Check out the new collection here.