BETWEEN THE JIGS & THE REELS (GREAT MOVIES BY IRISH DIRECTORS)

During a visit to the Foyle Film Festival eight years ago, Belfast-born film critic Mark Cousins remarked Irish cinema was a cottage industry.

Be that as it may, Terry George's recent Best Short Film Oscar success with 'The Shore' once again illustrated how filmmakers on both sides of the border can make their mark internationally with Irish and Ulster based stories.

So what are the best films made about Ireland by Irish born directors?

These are 10 St Patrick's Day picks. Feel free to quibble but remember we are talking about movies about Ireland, north and south, by Irish directors.

ANGEL (1982)

As film debuts go, they do not come more exhilarating than Neil Jordan's first foray into filmmaking.

One of the first crop of Film on Four movies, 'Angel' is an atmospheric revenge thriller set along the border which uses the Troubles as a backdrop. Stephen Rea plays Danny, a showband saxophonist who is traumatised after witnessing the execution of a deaf, mute girl by paramilitaries.

Questioned by the police, all he can remember is the orthopaedic shoe of one of the killers and it prompts him to go on a quest to hunt down those responsible and find out why it happened.

Jordan shows a sharp grasp of the visual and sonic possibilities of cinema and elicits strong performances from Rea, Veronica Quilligan, Honor Heffernan, Alan Devlin, Lise Ann McLaughlin, Ray McAnally and Donal McCann. The movie boasts accomplished cinematography from Chris Menges with scenes that linger long in the memory.

ANNE DEVLIN (1985)

Brid Brennan may have been back on our TV screens in the BBC's recent run of Graham Reid's resurrected 'Billy Plays'.

However the Belfast actress also turned in a towering performance in this movie as a peasant farmer's daughter who emerges as a formidable figure in Robert Emmett's 1803 rebellion against British rule.

Directed by Pat Murphy, one of the few women directors to make her mark in modern Irish cinema, the film does not follow cinematic convention and subtly links the battle for Irish independence with female emancipation while boasting some breathtaking visuals.

Murphy's movie features a strong cast with Bosco Hogan as Emmett, Des McAleer as James Hope, Ian McElhinney as Major Sirr and David Kelly as Dr Trevor. It's hard to believe Murphy has only three feature films to her name, including the impressive 'Nora' with Susan Lynch and Ewan McGregor, but she has played an important role in Irish cinema.

MY LEFT FOOT (1989)

Jim Sheridan's debut movie featured two barnstorming Oscar winning performances from Daniel Day Lewis as Christy Brown and Brenda Fricker as his mother.

But there were other notably strong performances too - not least from Hugh O'Connor as the young Christy, Ray McAnally as his father, Fiona Shaw, Eanna MacLiam, Adrian Dunbar and Ruth McCabe.

Beautifully written by Shane Connaughton and efficiently shot by cinematographer Jack Conroy with a musical score by Elmer Bernstein, the Noel Pearson produced film launched Jim Sheridan as a major cinematic talent.

It also marked out Daniel Day Lewis as the finest actor of his generation - something he would underscore with powerful performances for Sheridan as Gerry Conlon in 'In the Name of the Father' and in the ceasefire drama 'The Boxer' - both of which could easily have sneaked onto this list.

THE FIELD (1990)

Jim Sheridan's follow-up movie for Noel Pearson was a big screen version of one of John B Keane's best known and acclaimed plays.

Richard Harris turns in a tour de force performance as the Bull McCabe, a farmer obsessed with a piece of land he has cultivated for years at personal expense and threatened by the arrival of Tom Berenger's wealthy Yank.

But the movie has a host of strong performances from Berenger, John Hurt as the Bird , Sean Bean as the Bull's son Taig, Frances Tomelty as The Widow to Brenda Fricker as the Bull's largely silent and stoic wife.

Harris, who stepped into the role after Ray McAnally's death, turns the Bull into a Lear like figure while Sheridan gives the showdowns in his movie the feel of a Celtic Western, with Jack Conroy's lush cinematography. The most powerful scene belongs to Donegal actor Sean McGinley when his Catholic parish priest angrily denounces villagers from his pulpit and drives them out of his Church. It still makes the hairs stand on the back of audiences' necks.

DECEMBER BRIDE (1991)

There are remarkably few movies about Ulster Protestant culture.

However Thaddeus O'Sullivan tried to rectify that with an adaptation of Sam Hanna Bell's 1951 novel about a ménage a trois in a deeply Conservative rural community in Strangford Lough which scandalises the local community.

In her debut screen role, Saskia Reeves impresses as the servant girl Sarah Gilmartin who becomes romantically involved with Donal McCann and Ciaran Hinds' brothers, Hamilton and Frank Echlin, much to the ire of Patrick Malahide's local minister, the Reverend Edwin Sorleyson.

Sombre and carefully paced, O'Sullivan lets his camera do the talking with some stunning landscape cinematography in a movie which has echoes of John Ford's 'The Quiet Man', Karel Reisz's 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' and Scandanavian cinema, In an Irish cinematic context, there is something refreshing in the opening shots about seeing and hearing the rattling of a Lambeg drum echoing across the countryside.

KOREA (1995)

Based on a short story by John McGahern, veteran director Cathal Black's independent movie had an airing on TG4 earlier this week and 17 years on still packs a punch.

Set in a time of high levels of emigration from 1950s Ireland, Donal Donnelly stars as an embittered civil war veteran John Doyle who fishes for eels in Co Leitrim with his son Eamonn (Andrew Scott in an early film role).

Doyle's world is turned upside down when his arch enemy Ben Moran (Vass Anderson) loses a son in the Korean War and Eamonn falls for his rival's grieving daughter Una (Fiona Molony)

Once again the cast turn in impeccable performances but it is Black's deft handling of the story which impresses, with Nic Morris's cinematography breathing life into a drab landscape dominated by water. 'Korea' is a real gem which should be celebrated a lot more.

THE BUTCHER BOY (1997)

Those familar with Patrick McCabe's at times surreal comi-tragic novel about the disturbed Co Monaghan delinquent, Francie Brady may well have wondered how it could translate to the big screen.

They needn't have worried. Arguably Neil Jordan's finest hour, 'The Butcher Boy' belongs in the tradition of great European coming of age dramas like Francois Truffaut's 'Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows)' and John Boorman's 'Hope and Glory'.

Ciaran Owens is mesmerising as the disturbed but charming Francie Brady but the movie is packed with an array of stunning performances from Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Aisling O'Sullivan, Brendan Gleeson, Milo O'Shea, Sean McGinley, Niall Buggy, McCabe himself and even Sinead O'Connor as the Virgin Mary.

Jordan directs with a real boyish sense of mischief and a visual flourish. He came damn close to matching the success of 'The Butcher Boy' in his screen adaptation of McCabe's other great novel 'Breakfast On Pluto' with Cillian Murphy.

SALTWATER (2000)

One of the best playwrights to emerge on this island in the past 20 years, Conor McPherson made a delightful screen debut with the enjoyable crime caper road movie 'I Went Down' starring Brendan Gleeson, Peter McDonald and Tony Doyle.

However his follow-up is a much more mature, subtle and accomplished examination of three young males in crisis in a Dublin-Italian family.

Conor Mullen, Peter McDonald and Lawrence Kinkan are all struggling with moral dilemmas around sexual betrayal, crime and adolescence while George, the head of the family (Brian Cox), battles to keep the family's chip shop financially afloat.

All four actors are a joy to watch but there are strong supporting performances too from Eva Birthistle, Michael McElhatton, Gina Moxley as a Garda Sergeant and Brendan Gleeson as a bookie in a movie which tackles heavy issues but is sprinkled with a lot of humour. McPherson would later turn in a powerful supernatural thriller 'The Eclipse' with Ciaran Hinds, Aidan Quinn and Iben Hjejle which narrowly missed out on making this list.

ADAM AND PAUL (2004)

Director Lenny Abrahamson and writer-actor Mark O'Halloran announced themselves as a movie partnership to be reckoned with with this wonderful Beckettian tale of a day in the life of two desperate Dublin heroin addicts.

O'Halloran and Tony Award winner Tom Jordan Murphy are the eponymous heroes, desperate to raise enough money to scrounge drugs.

No film in the Celtic Tiger era demonstrated as starkly the huge disparity between those at the bottom and those at the top in Irish society. But the real triumph of this movie is the way Abrahamson and O'Halloran pull this feat off without ever being patronising.

Murphy and O'Halloran are fantastic in the lead roles - evoking memories of Dustin Hoffman's down-at-heel Ratso in 'Midnight Cowboy'. The movie now has an added poignancy following the death of Murphy of lymphatic cancer at the age of 38, robbing Irish theatre and cinema of an actor who was a huge talent.

Abrahamson and O'Halloran would follow their movie up with 'Garage' featuring a powerful performance by comedian Pat Shortt in a tragi-comic story about a lonely petrol attendant in a Midlands hamlet.

ONCE (2006)

Steven Spielberg famously championed John Carney's Dublin musical by declaring to USA Today: "A little movie called 'Once' gave me enough inspiration to last the rest of the year".

Virtually ignored on its release on this side of the Atlantic, Carney's low budget movie was an indie hit Stateside thanks to a stunning soundtrack and charming performances from Glen Hansard (of The Frames and The Commitments fame) as a Dublin busker and Marketa Irglova as the Czech immigrant he falls for.

'Once' is very intelligently directed, with Tim Fleming's cinematography and film editor Paul Mullen impressing.

And while it is best remembered for Irglova and Hansard's Oscar winning song 'Falling Slowly', the standout sequence is Irglova's walk through inner city Dublin at night as she sings 'If You Want Me'. Carney's film has recently inspired a Broadway musical.

(This article originally appeared on the Eamonnmallie.com website on March 17, 2012)