The Volta Myth
It is a widely-held belief that Ireland’s first dedicated cinema was the Volta, managed initially by James Joyce. But what if it wasn’t? Denis Condon examines earlier cinematic venues, including the Popular Picture Palace at the Queen’s Theatre.

’In England there is a growing demand for cinematograph entertainments’, announced Dublin’s Evening Mail in February 1908. ‘Every important town has its permanent “picture show”, and the Colonial Picture Combine see no reason why Ireland should not be adequately represented in this respect.’ The occasion of this statement was the opening of what was soon being advertised as the People’s Popular Picture Palace at the former Queen’s Theatre in Dublin’s Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street). This venue was probably Dublin and Ireland’s first dedicated cinema, opening almost two years before Ireland’s best-known early cinema, James Joyce’s Volta opened its doors on 20th December 1909.

It is curious how persistent the myth of the Volta has been in both popular and academic accounts of Irish cinema. The link between Ireland’s most celebrated 20th century writer and the most powerful medium of the 20th century makes such a good story that the misconception that the Volta was the first cinema in Dublin – and according to some accounts in Ireland – has circulated virtually unchallenged since it appeared in Richard Ellmann’s 1959 Joyce biography. The Volta was undoubtedly an important early cinema, and the Joyce connection has provided the focus for some fine research. The significance of the Volta has, however, been inflated to the extent that it has essentially come to represent Ireland’s first cinemas, and thereby to distort our view of early cinemas and the audiences who attended them.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 116.