Reclaiming the Irish border in contemporary cinema

Surprisingly, given the range of films covering the period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland there appears to be a dearth of analysis on the representation of the Irish border in indigenous and Hollywood/British cinematic narratives. Among a range of film examples, this analysis focuses on the work of Shane Connaughton, author/screenwriter of border films The Playboys (Mackinnon, 1992) and The Run of the Country (Yates, 1995) shot in the 1990s, before the Belfast Agreement (1998). Both films provide a rich representation of how the border impacts on the lives of those who exist on either side of the divide. Since the Belfast Agreement and the disappearance of border posts and army barracks across the region, movement has been transformed, as have representations of crossing over. This analysis proposes that in Johnny Gogan’s post Belfast Agreement films, Mapmaker (2001) and Black Ice (2013) and Brian Deane’s short film, Volkswagen Joe (2013) the representations of the border’s liminal spaces embrace in-betweeness as a key element of borderlander identity. In doing so, these films help to reclaim the border as a landscape where people dwell rather than an abstract line on a map.