COMING INTO CLOVER traces the evolution of the early cinema's representation of Ireland and the Irish from the medium’s emergence in the mid-1890s until the development of the Hollywood system in the late-1910s.
These films chronicle Irish America’s rise from the ghetto tenements to lace-curtain respectability, from despised underclass to model minority. They capture the changing perceptions of the Irish as ago-old bigotries steadily gave way to acceptance and respect.
The majority of films from this period are lost forever. Those that remain bear the marks and scratches of the century that has past since they first unspooled. But time has not diminished the vitality or resonance of the world they present: a world on the cusp of modernity, blinded by the prejudices of its past, yet staring ahead to a new century with all its glistening possibilities.
These films have never been seen publically before. Locked away in vaults, they have sat unnoticed collecting dust, their importance and significance known only to those few librarians and archivists who preserved them.
COMING INTO CLOVER brings this fascinating work to light and casts a new light on the Irish-American story.
Click here for more information on the films as well as sample clips.
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Brannigan Sets off the Blast (Biograph, 1906)
A Coal Strike (Biograph, 1906)