Bob Quinn

Bob Quinn (born Dublin, 1935) is an Irish filmmaker, writer and photographer who directed Poitín (1978), the first feature film entirely in the Irish language. His documentary work includes Atlantean, a series of four documentaries about the origins of the Irish people. Quinn has a history of protesting the commercialisation of television, resigning from RTÉ in 1969 on that basis and resigning from the RTÉ Authority in 1999 to protest toy advertising. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Film Institute in 2001 and is a member of the Aosdána. Early life and television career Quinn was born in Dublin in 1935. After a series of other jobs, he moved into television in 1961, joining Ireland's national public-service television station, RTÉ, as a trainee studio operator the year it first broadcast. He worked up to directing films there, but resigned in 1969 in protest against the commercialisation of the network. He wrote his first book, Sit Down and be Counted with Lelia Doolan and Jack Dowley, who had also quit, about that episode. In 1973, he established his own production company, Cinegael, in Carraroe, County Galway, together with a cinema by the same name, in which Quinn and his family lived. In June 1995, Quinn was appointed to the RTÉ Authority. After he criticised RTÉ on Tonight With Vincent Browne, on RTÉ Radio 1, on 7 November 1996, he was removed from the panel interviewing candidates to be Director-General of RTÉ. Quinn had also been part of the campaign that led to the launch of TnaG, now TG4, on 31 October 1996. While on the Authority, he suspended his own membership every Christmas to protest RTÉ's reliance on toy advertising aimed at children, and he quit the Authority in July 1999, saying that "to brainwash children is simply unacceptable and the pressure it puts on parents to buy these products is simply scandalous" and that RTÉ needed to do more to represent regions of Ireland outside the capital, Dublin. Filmmaking In 1978, Quinn made Poitín, which was the first feature film ever made entirely in the Irish language. It was also the first feature film to receive funding from the Arts Council of Ireland. The film was a story about an illegal distiller of poitín in rural Connemara and starred Cyril Cusack, Donal McCann and Niall Tóibín. The premiere was held in Carraroe.