Speech given by Joe Comerford at the Bloomsday 100 Conference (Dublin, 14th June 2004).

To start. There is a need for caution, as we all only have fragments of information to make sense of life, but it's worth pursuing the fragments. James Joyce made a good job with his allocation. I had almost forgotten how good until recently when I re-read a section of Ulysses (Gerty McDowell on the Beach) which I had hoped to make into a film, but couldn't get copyright clearance at the time. I'm glad now. It increased my own impulse to write. That was in a period when there was a strong aspiration to make Films, now the aspiration for the most part is to make Movies. Language is important here so let me clarify what I mean. It is not a distinction based on nostalgia. Historically, making a film usually involved taking a story and revealing its dynamics through film language. There was no agenda involved.

What movies have become, in my opinion, is the act of turning a story towards an objective, usually with a hidden politic and a surface commercialism and always with an agenda. Many countries make movies or films with a range of objectives. American movies are sold to the rest of us as a product of the entertainment industry. There is also that almost extinct entity the American film, a tiny but terrific adjunct to the movie industry. But in particular, since the McCarthy era in the 1950's, the primary objective of the movies seems to be to sell the US worldview.

Once a movie fulfils that objective it is free to go into production and distribution for profit. These movies can be made outside the United States and some of these movies come to the Irish Service Industry. If the story is Irish we might even call it an IRISH FILM and use it to portray Ireland to other countries. The new mythology.

So, if the basis of present movie production is built on a myth, does it matter? Do we need to dispel that myth? What is becoming increasingly evident is that movie-making nations can become victims of their own propaganda. This drift is even becoming apparent in Ireland, and raises another question where language is again important.

The USA is the most powerful country at this point in history, and it sells itself to other western countries and wider as a market economy, bringing its 'successful' philosophy to enhance our lives via globalisation.

But on examination is it in reality a market economy or is this another myth (for example it subsidises whatever and whenever it needs) and whose lives does it NOT effect anyway?

So do we, away from the source of power, consume two myths? The first, that we become a market economy, as a necessity for financial survival, without rigorous scrutiny of what it does to our society (or only concentrate on the benefits especially for the rich). The second myth we consume is that 'the movies' are primarily an entertainment industry. Getting acceptance of these two myths seems to be an essential part of implementing an economic and political world view.

So what happens to those who do not accept these myths as propagated? It's an old story, where the new religion pervades, i.e. the market economy, it supersedes in influence the traditional beliefs, but the effect is similar for storytellers – a degree of compliance or a degree of exile. But now you can't necessarily go anywhere else. Filmmakers, for the most part, cannot work outside their own societies. External exile is not a real choice. Movies are not about revealing the dynamics of a chosen subject, so they are mobile. Like capital.

But again, let me be careful, words are important. Words such as censorship are now redefined, and books are written about how awful censorship was in past times. But that kind of thing could not be happening now in our 'progressive liberal democracies'? We could talk about the joys of censorship, but better to move on.

So what's this secret the powerful have known for thousands of years, that if you control storytelling you control society! But one debatable difference now is that control of information is the primary arena of war. Military action or inaction then follows. Language is the main weapon, the language of words and the language of images.

James Joyce's main sin is that he linked cause and effect. A mortal sin – especially in present Irish society, dedicated as it is to not understanding itself at all costs, no matter how many suicides. Joyce used language without an agenda. That has the appearance of a neutral activity but, then as now, it is unacceptable in the estimation of those seeking to control. Until quite recently there was some neutral ground in this society that allowed the language of a film to emerge from its subject matter, and because the language could emerge an aesthetic could develop. That development of an aesthetic in feature length story telling is now almost closed off.

This is a problem. Traditional film language, which cannot evolve, becomes obsolete, and obsolete language is not capable of expressing the lives we now live... There are consequences. The price of substituting a movie service industry for indigenous filmmaking is that feature length, in-depth stories of Irish society, rarely get made or shown. Shorts do a lot better.

Unfortunately movie production does not favour co-existence with any possible challenger. With few exceptions it wants to dominate, control and wipe out any competition or any memory of what stories might mean in raw, unprocessed forms without agendas. It is not a question of which is good and which is bad, it is a question of a fundamental difference in purpose, which should be recognised.

No democratic society can allow film to be considered primarily as a business. That is what the market economy has done. Yes, it must be run efficiently, but our self-knowledge and sanity are too important to human existence to let this monstrous lie continue. If we can curtail economic fundamentalism in contemporary western societies, perhaps the existence of the artist may not have to be re-defined out of existence and into banality. The worst of this sanitisation is currently evident in moving pictures where 'friendly fire' pervades. The encroachment will continue in all areas of artistic activity if, as is now happening, some artists are either ignoring the erosion or are consciously assisting it. This society lost a lot of the Irish language during penal times. Is it going to loose a lot of its storytelling in global times?

The Hollywood movie, in recent decades, has almost eliminated culture for commercial criteria. In Ireland now the purpose is to become a mini-Hollywood. Removing culture is at an advanced stage. The Film Board has being doing it by stealth (almost like the effective transfer of the administration from the West back to Dublin, despite Government Policy to decentralise).

If cultural criteria are to be reintroduced, then the Film Board must be fundamentally restructured. Options vary from having two different organisations, one for commercial movies and one for cultural film, to having two departments with separate directors under an alternating chairperson. The two departments could even "compete". The Arts Council must also re-engage after decades of evasion.

To do nothing with the film structures and continue as at present is to destroy storytelling on film. And to what end Mr Joyce?

This article is printed in Film Ireland 104 (May/Jun 2005)