Colm Ó Laoghaire: Colm Ó Laoghaire, who has died aged 88, was a pioneering documentary film-maker and the first Irish prize winner at the Cork Film Festival.
In his career he worked as cameraman, writer, producer and director. Working independently, and for clients such as Bord Fáilte, the Department of Foreign Affairs and RTÉ, he made some of the most important and enlightening films in Irish film history.
Perhaps his most memorable work was with Jim Mulkerns on the Amharc Éireann newsreel series for Gael Linn. It was the most successful and longest-running theatrical newsreel produced in Ireland. A total of 269 films (one per week) were shown in Irish cinemas in the five years from 1959 to 1964.
Ó Laoghaire said their primary purpose was "to encourage the public to accept Irish in the cinema as something normal and everyday (no more: not even to teach a few words)". The series has been praised for its immediacy and a very progressive aesthetic.
Aesthetics aside, production presented practical problems and deadlines were tight. Footage was sent to London to be developed, sent back to Dublin for editing and returned to London for prints to be made. These were then despatched to Dublin for distribution.
Other documentaries included Our Money at Work (1957), highlighting Ireland's role in the international economy, Our Neighbour's Children (1960), on life in a Dublin children's hospital, and The Most Gallant Gentleman (1966), a record of the return to Ireland in 1965 of Roger Casement's exhumed remains.
Born in Dublin in 1919, he was the son of Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire, a trade union organiser, and his wife Mimi (Philomena), daughter of Count Horace Plunkett and sister of the executed 1916 leader Joseph Mary Plunkett.
He objected to the strict regime of the Christian Brothers at Coláiste Mhuire, Parnell Square and registered his protest by mitching. He boarded at St Joseph's College, Garbally Park, Co Galway and studied engineering at UCD, but did not complete his degree. Membership of the UCD student dramatic society inspired him to join the Irish Film Society founded in 1936. His first films, vigorously promoting the Irish language, were shown on the streets of Dublin.
His first professional film job was on Brendan Stafford's film, A Nation Once Again (1946). He then established Comhar Cino, a film production company, with the future RTÉ journalist Kevin O'Kelly. But film commissions were few and the company concentrated on photographic PR work.
He made documentary shorts for Gael Linn before working on Amharc Éireann. With the advent of an indigenous television service, demand for cinema newsreels declined, and in 1966 he joined Telefís Éireann. There he worked on Aos Óg, Discovery and Horizon and a series of programmes on Gaeltacht areas, and later for the RTÉ film department as an acceptance viewer.
A staunch republican, he was interned during the Emergency. He was associated with Clann na Phoblachta and the Labour Party. A member of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, he took part in the first protest at Lansdowne Road against the Springboks.
In 1994 the Irish Film Archive presented a tribute to him, and among the films screened was Water Wisdom (1962). A dramatised production shot in Ring, Co Waterford, it was made to encourage small farming communities to co-operate in providing themselves with piped water. It won a Saint Finbar Statuette at the Cork Film Festival.
He is survived by his wife Nora (née Mallon), sons Art, Rory and Donal and daughters Aemer, Deirdre and Niamh.
Colm Ó Laoghaire: born September 8th, 1919; died December 26th, 2007