Raiders of the Lost Archive: the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Film Industry 1942

In 1938, Sean Lemass, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, established a three man committee with a broad remit to examine and report on every aspect – actual and putative – of the Irish film industry. This report would examine not merely the exhibition, distribution and production of film but also its potential as a cultural force and the extent to which the established censorship regime was fulfilling its obligations to ‘protect public morality against any danger of contamination or deterioration which might threaten it through the influence of cinema’ (RICFI, 1942: 44).