Irish Queer Cinema

'A sophisticated and engaging addition to the academic literature on Irish cinema, Irish Queer Cinema offers an impressive series of theoretically informed close textual analyses to trace the development of onscreen queer sexualities over the past forty years, arguing for an understanding of sexuality in cinema as spatially regulated and produced.'
Conn Holohan, NUI Galway

'Irish Queer Cinema offers a new perspective that focuses on queer identities and attends to the textual configuration of space that they entail. Such organisation of the argument, supported by detailed analysis of films that are uniquely brought together in this work, significantly challenges and extends the range of canonical Irish film texts. Avoiding the tired "representations of " approach that is too common in studies of national cinemas and writing with admirable lucidity and analytical precision, Macleod has produced a sophisticated book that makes an exciting and original contribution to the literature on Irish cinema.'
Dimitris Eleftheriotis, University of Glasgow

In recent years queer identities have become increasingly visible in Irish cinema. This shift can be linked to political, economic and social changes taking place both in Ireland and around the world, as well as to changes in national film policy to cater more to international audiences.

Irish Queer Cinema explores the sexual politics and socio-economic conditions that have determined the shape and evolution of these representations. Through selective deployment of queer theory and theories of space, this book provides a unique approach to Irish queer cinema via the sexual politics of space - interrogating how social and spatial relations are structured by gender and sexual ideologies and how these are represented within cinematic space.

Drawing together more than twenty-five films as depictive of an Irish queer cinema, including Pigs, A Man of No Importance and Breakfast on Pluto, Allison Macleod investigates the different ways gender and sexuality intersect with national forms of belonging and examines the role of queerness within the constitution of an Irish national culture.

Allison Macleod is a researcher in Film Studies whose primary research interests include queer theory, representations of space and movement in film, and the role of the national in shaping cultural identity.

Cover image: Albert Finney in A Man of No Importance, Suri Krishnamma, 1994

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Acknowledgements
List of Figures
1. Queerly National and Nationally Queer: Paradoxes of an Irish Queer Cinema
I. Queer
II. Irish
III. Space
2. Mapping Ireland's Queer Films
I. First Wave Queer Cinema
II. Celtic Tiger Queer Cinema
III. Post-Celtic Tiger Queer Cinema
3. Re-Imagined Kinship and Failed Communities
I. Queering the Family
II. Pigs
III. The Last Bus Home
IV. Conclusion
4. The Contested Space of the Irish Pub
I. The Male Homosocial Space of the Irish Pub
II. A Man of No Importance
III. Garage
III. Conclusion
5: Compartmentalised Cosmopolitans and Rigid Fluidity
I. Cowboys and Angels
II. Goldfish Memory
III. Situating Irish Lesbianism within Urban Space
IV. Conclusion
6. The Queerly Productive Constraints of Rural Space
I. Reefer and the Model
II. Clash of the Ash
III. The Stag
IIV. Conclusion
7. Queer Mobilities and Disassociated Masculinities
I. I Went Down
II. The Disappearance of Finbar and Breakfast on Pluto
III. Conclusion
8. Contested Belongings within Diasporic Space
I. Reconstituting 'Home' within Diaspora
II. 2by4
III. Borstal Boy
IV. Conclusion
9. The Irish Queer Short Film
I. The Contestation of Public Space
II. Disrupting Domestic Spaces
III. The Spatiality of Lesbian Desire
IV. Conclusion
10. Concluding Remarks
11. Filmography
12. References
Endnotes