I feel Irish-Americans are the forgotten minority group. Nobody else is making films about them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It's so tough to get movies made in Ireland anymore. A whole generation of Irish filmmakers doesn't have the resources to get a movie made.
As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with.
I think women are in much the same place in the Irish theater as they are everywhere else. Certainly, we have wonderful Irish writers, and we have quite a number of Irish women directors. But there could be more, and there should be more.
I'm Irish; I grew up in Ireland, and it's impossible to separate my background from who I am as a filmmaker.
I had great faith in Irish actors, that they'd be hip to the whole theatre thing, and they are. I had no illusions of coming over here as some kind of big shot. It's been a learning experience for me too.
I don't want to, in any way, characterize a race or a people or get accused of racial profiling, but the Irish, as lyrical and romantic as they can be in their poetry, they can be every bit as repressed in their personal relations.
Many black people I know are proud of the Irish part of their heritage - an Irish grandparent, say - but they recognise that many people believe in a form of racial purity. And it is from that belief that prejudice starts.
Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history.
We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.
It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.