Colm Ó Laoghaire accepting the St Finbarr statuette in 1962

Colm Ó Laoghaire accepting the St Finbarr statuette in 1962

Cork Film Festival, Colm Ó Laoghaire, Colm O'Leary, St Finbarr Statuette, Award, RTÉ, Niall Tóibín, Séamus Murphy, Arthur Watkins

This is a black and white photo of the Irish filmmaker Colm Ó Laoghaire accepting an award from Arthur Watkins, president of the International Federation of Film Producers Association. The award was for the best film in the educational section for the Irish-spoken Fior Uisce (Water Wisdom), which was sponsored by the Department of Local Government. Narrated by Niall Tóibín, and filmed in Ring and Old Parish, Waterford, it was aimed at encouraging rural communities to provide themselves with piped water, at a time when four out of five homes relied on non-tapped water. Ruth Barton notes in her book, Irish National Cinema (Routledge, 2004:68), that Ó Laoghaire’s film was so close to Soviet filmmaking practices, both in style and temperament, the Soviet delegation at the 1962 Cork Film Festival expressed an interest in inviting Ó Laoghaire to the (then) USSR.

As well as working for RTÉ, Ó Laoghaire also produced and directed Gael Linn cinema newsreels for many years. In addition to Fior Uisce, his filmography includes Tony Bacillus & Co (1946), a short silent film which used puppets to fight the tuberculosis germ, Irish Gossamer (1958), which was commissioned by the Irish Tourist Board to encourage visitors to Ireland, and Gaeltacht, a series of programmes looking at life in the Gaeltacht in the late 1960s. Colm Ó Laoghaire died in Dublin in 2007.

University College Cork, Cork Film Festival

Cork Film Festival Collection

University College Cork

1962

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Photo
TIFF
JPEG

English, eng

1962
Cork, Ireland

Photo

219 x 162mm