McIlroy, Brian 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born December 17, 1959, in Belfast, Northern Ireland; immigrated to Canada, 1984; son of a hardware store owner and a homemaker; married Valerie Wagar; children: Angela. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: University of Sheffield, B.A., 1981; University of Leeds, M.A., 1983; University of British Columbia, Ph.D., 1991.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Theater and Film, University of British Columbia, 6354 Crescent Rd., Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1W5, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Lewes Technical College, Lewes, East Sussex, England, lecturer in video production, film studies, and drama, 1982-84; University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, sessional lecturer, 1988-89; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, instructor, 1989-91, assistant professor, 1991-96, associate professor, 1996-2001, professor of film studies, 2001—; chair of film program, 1997-99, 2004-07.

MEMBER:

Film Studies Association of Canada, Canadian Association for Irish Studies.

WRITINGS:

World Cinema 2: Sweden, Flicks Books (London, England), 1986.

Irish Cinema: An Illustrated History, Anna Livia Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1988.

(Editor, with André Loiselle) Auteur/Provocateur: The Films of Denys Arcand, Praeger Publishers (Westport, CT), 1995.

Shooting to Kill: Filmmaking and the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, Flicks Books (London, England), 1998, 2nd edition, Richmond & Steveston Press (Richmond, British Columbia, Canada), 2001.

(Editor, with Jonathan Wisenthal, Sherrill Grace, and others) A Vision of the Orient: The Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts of Madame Butterfly, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2006.

(Editor) Genre and Cinema: Ireland and Transnationalism, Routledge (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor of articles, chapters, and reviews to various books and publications.

SIDELIGHTS:

Brian McIlroy, author and professor of film studies, critically examines the cinematic portrayal of Northern Ireland's political struggles in his work Shooting to Kill: Filmmaking and the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland. His examination includes Neil Jordan's The Crying Game and Terry George's Some Mother's Son, as well as two films by Jim Sheridan, among others. McIlroy's concern is that British and Irish films and television dramas under-represent the Protestant Unionist community in these films, leading outsiders mistakenly to believe that the main struggle is between the Catholic Republican community and the British Army, and that the Republican community is the underdog. Recognizing the potential of films to sway or form public opinion, McIlroy stresses the importance of discussing what he calls the "cultural arena around the conflict." His 2007 book, Genre and Cinema: Ireland and Transnationalism, brings together leading Irish film scholars to examine Irish cinema through the lens of genre theory and criticism.

McIroy has also written books on the history of Swedish cinema and Irish filmmaking, but his most Canadian work is Auteur/Provocateur: The Films of Denys Arcand, a compilation of essays that he edited with André Loiselle. This compilation is the first book-length work on the controversial Canadian director Denys Arcand to be published in Canada or the United States, and was described by Film Quarterly reviewer Wheeler Winston Dixon as "a solid and well-researched consideration of Arcand's films." Arcand achieved international acclaim with the success of his films Jesus in Montreal and The Decline of the North American Empire. With a career that spans thirty years, Arcand has played a pivotal role in French-Canadian cinema. Some of his lesser-known documentaries, however, were banned in Canada for their harsh portrayal of the socioeconomic realities of Quebec. McIlroy and Loiselle crafted Auteur/Provocateur in an attempt to determine why Arcand's use of dialectic and the resulting lack of closure continually disturbs critics. The volume includes eight essays, including an interview with Arcand. In his review, Dixon commended McIlroy for his "painstakingly detailed filmography" of Arcand's work and called Auteur/Provocateur "an essential volume in understanding Arcand's films."

McIlroy once told CA: "My interest in movies is probably due to our perception in Belfast that they were liberating acts in a very conservative and troubled society. Also, a social life in 1970s Belfast was almost impossible at times, so I ended up watching a lot of TV and movies instead."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Film Quarterly, summer, 1988, Ernest Callenbach, review of World Cinema 2: Sweden, p. 46; fall, 1996, Wheeler Winston Dixon, review of Auteur/Provocateur: The Films of Denys Arcand, pp. 39-40.

French Review, February, 1997, Henry A. Garrity, review of Auteur/Provocateur, pp. 483-484.

Irish Literary Supplement, spring, 2000, Michael Patrick Gillespie, "Irish Celluloid," p. 3.

ONLINE

Film Studies Association of Canada,http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/gpc/crccii/fsac (January 11, 2002).

University of British Columbia Web site,http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ (March 18, 1999), review of Shooting to Kill: Filmmaking and the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland.

University of British Columbia Web site,http://www.film.ubc.ca/ (May 29, 2008), faculty profile.