This Other Eden

The IFI Irish Film Archive are pleased to continue their collaboration with access> CINEMA and to make films from the national heritage collection available to interest groups around the country. The IFI Irish Film Archive collection comprises amateur and professional material, fiction and non-fiction, newsreels, feature films, animations, travelogues and educational films. The material dating from 1897 to the present day is preserved in custom design vaults in the IFI premises in Temple Bar. The first Irish feature film to be directed by a woman, This Other Eden is a caustic comedy set in 1945 where the erection of a statue of a patriot martyr Jack Carberry creates problems in a small town. The film explores the traumatic legacy of the Civil war and in particular the impact of the death of Michael Collins on successive generations. Given that the producer, Emmet Dalton was with Michael Collins the day he was shot, some critics have speculated that the film was an attempt to redress, even rewrite the history of that time. However, with a fine supporting cast of Abbey Players and star turns from Leslie Philips as a hapless romantic Englishman, Audrey Dalton as a wonderfully independent-minded young woman, Milo O’Shea and Hilton Edwards, This Other Eden is not just a critique of the past but a witty and complex comment on an emergent modern Ireland. The film, shot in Chapelizod (near Dublin’s Phoenix Park), Wicklow town and Ardmore Studios, has now been digital re-mastered from original elements.