We sat down with director Paul Webster, ahead of the TG4 premiere of his latest documentary 100 Bliain de Thithíocht - Géarchéim gan Deireadh/100 Years of Housing - Crisis Without End on October 25th, at 9:30pm.
Paul Webster is the writer and director of 100 Years of Housing - Crisis Without End, a new feature documentary about the history of Ireland’s housing crisis, which will debut on TG4, tomorrow at 9:30pm. His previous films include Borderland, a 26-minute documentary exploring the refugee crisis along Europe’s Borders, and docu-drama The Vasectomy Doctor, produced by Carbonated Comet Productions.
100 Bliain de Thithíocht - Géarchéim gan Deireadh/100 Years of Housing - Crisis Without End is a decade-by-decade look at how Irish housing issues have been tackled since the birth of the Irish state and where it all went wrong. The feature documentary argues that Ireland was born in a housing crisis that has never gone away, and that every government and generation has had to contend with this same issue. Webster draws a line from the flats of the 30s to the high-rises of the 60s, from the bungalows of the 70s to the bubble of the 00s.
A host of historians, architects, planners and thinkers have been carefully selected to shed new light on this ongoing issue. This archive presents revealing and heartening insights from real people throughout the decades, building a picture of how housing policies affect ordinary people.
We caught up with director Paul Webster to discuss the origins of 100 Years of Housing - Crisis Without End, his use of archive footage, and how his research has informed his perspective on the housing crisis.
IFTN: When did you first become interested in making a documentary about the history of Irish housing?
PAUL: “It's something that evolved very organically out of conversations I was having with the producers Stephen Smith and Medb Johnstone at Midas Productions, when we hit upon the notion of looking at Ireland's history of housing as a whole. It was such a simple but effective idea and this made it very easy to pitch.”
“The crisis is inescapable and there is a real hunger for content that can help explain the situation we're in. For the last decade or so in Ireland, we have been in the era of centenaries and there have been so many documentaries and events about how the country was born, but now I think we have to look at what happened next, how we ruled ourselves.”
“At an early stage, we worked with historian Donal Fallon who had done some great research on how Ireland tackled housing crises of the past and we learned that Ireland was actually born in a housing crisis. We wanted to draw a line through the decades up to now and learn from the mistakes and the successes of Irish housing.”
IFTN: How did you go about using archive footage to tell this story?
PAUL: “TG4 came on board at a very early stage and this was a huge boost, Commissioning Editor Máire Ní Chonláin really encouraged us to go cinematic and poetic with it. It was extremely important to have this freedom as the topic is so emotive and affects people on such a personal level. Roxanna Nic Liam wrote and performed a powerful spoken word piece that captures the emotional toll of the crisis and bookends the film.”
“In this context, we had licence to use the archive in an artistic and affecting way. Myself and cinematographer Keith Pendred thought a lot about how we would represent the decades visually and to do this, we utilised a variety of shooting formats including 8mm film, VHS, and black & white photography.”
“We wanted to start at the birth of the state and then work our way forward. First, we had to give an understanding of what came before independence, how poor the housing stock was and how ravaged the country was by war, there had been almost no building done in the 10 years leading up to independence. The archive from this time is amazing, but also very expensive so we had to be selective and creative in how we would convey these early decades.”
“From the 60s on, we had access to the RTE archives and because housing has always been such an important issue, the RTE journalists and producers made a lot of programmes exploring the topic from different angles. There's some really wonderful stuff there. We had a lot to play with and we wanted to use this archive in a very emotive way. It was amazing to hear all these people talking about housing issues from 40 or 50 years ago, interviews with all sorts of people and if you just close your eyes they could be talking about the same issues of today.”
“The editor Gordon Bruic and producer Deirdre Learmont had worked together on archival stories before, so their experience was invaluable. I think viewers will be fascinated by the depth and richness of this archive.”
IFTN: What did your research process look like for this film, and what was the most surprising piece of information you came across?
PAUL: “A lot of people assume that this history is going to be very depressing, but it's really not. There was a lot of good work done on the issue over the decades. We look at it like a history of ideas and ideologies, some were good and some were bad, but the system was trying to provide as many homes as possible. There was a very significant shift in the 80s away from social housing, it became more stigmatised and this was reinforced in the 90s and 00s when it seemed like the market would provide all the homes we needed. Looking back at the destruction of the Ballymun Towers now, it feels almost like a piece of national theatre, to show an end to the era of social housing. I believe this approach of letting the market look after housing has been an utter failure and has led us to where we are now. Once the civil war was over, the former revolutionaries had to figure out how they would address the desperate housing situation.”
“The first governmental act of the country was to put a million punt towards housing. Irish governments understood that they had an obligation to build social housing, if they didn't, they would be voted out at the next election and this happened continuously. It's clear to me that we have to adopt the spirit of these early decades of the Irish state.”
“This is such an emotive issue and we wanted to reflect this by making a film that was cinematic and poetic as well as informative. The film features a line-up of some of the most important thinkers on the topic and they explain their ideas for the future of housing in Ireland. We wanted to give context to our current situation and hopefully arm the audience with a better understanding of the current crisis, and start conversations on what we need to do to get out of it.”
100 Bliain de Thithíocht- Géarchéim gan Deireadh airs on TG4 on Wednesday October 25 at 9:30pm.
