Documentary film The Yellow Bittern, directed by Alan Gilsenan, is an intimate and utterly honest portrayal of the folk innovator Liam Clancy whose opus has inspired many musicians and bands, from Bob Dylan and U2, to Tom Waits and The Pogues, as well as some African American musicians such as Odetta, with whom Liam appeared on stage at the legendary concert in 2006. He began his musical career in New York in the 1950’s with the band 'The Clancy Brothers', consisting of brothers Paddy, Tom & Liam Clancy, and Tommy Makem, whose trademark on the stage were thick white fishermen’s Aran sweaters. The documentary was made shortly before Clancy passed away in December 2009, but in spite of that the director’s approach is not nostalgic. The author placed his protagonist on a minimalistic stage with a video screen in the background and thus his two-hour long piece can be regarded as Clancy’s two-hour long monologue interspersed with rare archival footage of his concerts and photographs, during which the author frames the musicians’ face in a series of emotional close-ups. 'The Coen Brothers', or rather brothers and authors Joel and Ethan Coen, refer to the same NY folk scene gathered around the smoky club 'The Gaslight' in Greenwich Village where 'The Clancy Brothers' played, in their film Inside Llewyn Davis starring Oscar Isaac.

Authors Lisa Barros D'sa and Glenn Leyburn, famous for their irresistible teen film Cherrybomb, focus on the Belfast’s punk legend Terry Hooley in their film Good Vibrations. In it they interchange the litany of rock movie clichés with damn funny, passionate and monumental story about creation of a myth. Hooley is portrayed by the energetic Richard Dormer, more known to some as Beric Dondarrion from the TV series Game of Thrones. In the beginning of the film, we meet Hooley as a DJ in a pub in the politically screwed-up Belfast of the 1970’s (his father was a member of the Labour party of Northern Ireland and afterwards joined the Militants when the aforementioned party turned too much to the right). Then he met the woman of his dreams (Jodie Whittaker) and opens a record store from the title of the film. And the rest is history. The turning point in Hooley’s life happens when he meets the local punk band 'The Outcasts', and later on he discovers his ultimate 'sons' in the members of the legendary band from Derry 'The Undertones'. At this point the author’s creative process reminds us dangerously of the mechanisms used in Winterbottom’s film '24 Hours Party People', featuring Belfast instead of Manchester. However, if we refer to the famous one-liner from the cult film This is Spinal Tap, the author is more concerned with “views, sounds and scents” than the truth.

In the romantic film Once, Belfast is replaced by Dublin and it features a street musician who falls in love with a Czech tourist. The author of the film, John Carney, is also the author of the music and he tried to repeat a similar formula in his next film Sing Street, in which 1980’s rock’n’roll, somewhere between Duran Duran, Cure and A-Ha, replaces the ballads and in which the street musician is replaced by a group of high-school students who are trying to find an escape from the Irish economic despair in music.

While all these documentaries and feature films focus on the power of music, animated film Secret of Kells directed by Tomm Moore, tells the story about the power of books and takes us on a journey through the fairy-tales of our childhoods. However, Moore and Twomey’s sensibility is closer to that of the Grimm brothers rather than Disney, while their elegant retro poetics panders to both four-year-olds and historians who historians who study the Middle Ages, as well as those who prefer action in form of Viking’s fire arrows. The melancholic Song of the Sea about the ethereal beauty of the submarine lagoon, also directed by Moore, this time without Nora Twomey, brings us back to music, even though the film opens with verses by WB Yeats. At times, the animation evokes the Japanese Studio Ghibli, or rather Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, with touches of Sylvain Chomet. Irish folk band Kila took care of the music in the film. (Dragan Rubeša)