From the international successes of Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan, to the smaller productions of the new generation of Irish filmmakers, the recent flowering of Irish cinema may be seen as a symbol of the nation's emergence from the backwaters of twentieth century culture into the mainstream of the global economy. In a country where the modern has been long regarded as a source of suspicion, cinema has occupied a fraught position within Irish society. Attacked by the Church for its detrimental influence on the faithful, regarded by the left as a tool of capitalism and by the Republican...