2024/09/11 by Lennart Soberon, Kevin Smets · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Irish and British Studies #Philippine History and Culture #Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration
paper · doi:10.1080/09670882.2024.2397763
openalex publication_date 2024/09/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Because of the Irish border's troubled history and heightened symbolism, filmmakers have since long relied on the border as a setting to thematise issues of national identity, belonging, and trauma. Departing from the concept of border poetics this article takes films featuring the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland as its topic of inquiry. Beyond compiling a border film archive in which all cinematic representation of the Irish border is collected, a close reading is conducted of border mobilities in a sample of 43 narrative fiction films (1937-2021). The article's textual analysis makes the distinction between three border mobilities (1) border crossing, (2) border inhabiting, and (3) border (re)visiting, to investigate how filmmakers utilise the Irish border for various narrative, formal, and ideological ends. As such, the border's cinematic legacy can be better understood.