Irish toast unprecedented Oscar buzz, fret over future

Irish cinema toasted a record nine Oscar nominations on January 14 that filmmakers and producers attributed to two decades of patient funding, although they fear this could be undone by recent sharp government cuts to the arts.

Michael Fassbender and Saoirse Ronan won nominations for acting while Room and Ronan’s immigrant tale Brooklyn – both Irish directed and part-financed by the state-funded Irish Film Board – shared seven nominations, including best picture.

Irish short Stutterer rounded off a haul that the country’s president described as “remarkable”, one that has prompted calls on the government to reverse a 40 per cent cut to the film board’s budget since the 2008 financial crisis hit Ireland hard.

“This is the bearing of fruit after proper support for the filmmaking community over a number of years but it's such a fabulously fragile business that we could lose all the gains,” says director Lenny Abrahamson, nominated for the first time for Room.

“It’s very easy to say we’ll knock another 10 per cent off the film board’s budget but that’s very short sighted. People will just get disheartened. You won’t notice it this year or next year, but you will notice it in five or 10 years’ time.”

When Abrahamson first started making short films in the early 1990s with a fellow first time Irish nominee, Room producer Ed Guiney, there was no film board.

Academy Award success for Irish director Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot and Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game helped lead to the reinstatement of the film board in 1993.