Rebecca Kemp takes a look at the Irish language's most prolific calling card.

The short form has experienced a renaissance of late, with festivals giving it greater attention and the press more column inches. This is due in no small way to the increased accessibility of the genre, cheaper and easier to use equipment, wider exhibition opportunities presented by the internet, and the ability to download onto portable devices. As a champion of the low budget and experimental, the Irish film industry is producing more films in this form than ever before. An Irish short even won an Oscar in 2006, Martin McDonagh's Six Shooter.

Cheap and quick
With the short form appealing to most filmmakers' modest budgets and audiences' ever decreasing attention span, making shorts in the Irish language has never been more popular. One could go so far as to say that the Irish-language short has eclipsed its feature equivalent in gaining international recognition and in becoming the primary medium in which Irish-language films are currently being made. Shorts are responsible for pushing the genre further in terms of subject matter and production, and have become an important platform on which to expose the Irish language to a non-Gaelic speaking audience.

Does this mark a new dawn for Irish filmmakers, or is it still a case of filling out a form and making a film that fulfils funding criteria? Do critics have a point that many films are made that have no basis in the Irish language, but are simply script translations done to qualify for funding? Others may rightly complain that many films are made by people who don't understand Irish and disregard the nuances of regional dialects and colloquialisms.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 114.