Bob Quinn

Bob Quinn started out working for Irish state television, Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ). After major changes there, he left in 1969 to start his own film company, Cinegael, based on the Connamara islands, where he has lived ever since. Quinn concerns himself with an anti-colonialist cinema of liberation. Although he has made over sixty films (and is one of Ireland's most prolific film-makers) few of them have been exhibited widely in cinemas. Poitín (1979) was the first Irish feature drama produced wholly in the Irish language. With this film, Quinn worked with a cast of local actors who depict members of a marginalised rural community defined by alienation, frustration and hardship, revolving around an illegal distilling operation. Countering the romanticised mainstream depiction of the West of Ireland made popular by The Quiet Man in 1952, Poitín proposes a culture with its own law and cinematic logic.