Hell’s Kitchen Document Collection

Context

Creator(s): Jim Sheridan and Hell's Kitchen International Ltd.

• Administrative History ↴

  In 1992, director Jim Sheridan and producer Arthur Lappin formed the production company Hell’s Kitchen. To date, the company have produced In the Name of the Father (1993), Some Mother's Son (1996), The Boxer (1997), Agnes Browne (1999), Borstal Boy (2000), On the Edge (2001), Bloody Sunday (2002), In America (2003), Cadillac Man: Life Under the Viaduct (2006) and A Soldier's Choice (2008). Sheridan was born in Dublin in 1949, the son of Anna and Peter Sheridan, a CIE clerk. He was the oldest of seven children and the brother of the writer and theatre director Peter Sheridan. He was educated by the Christian Brothers and in 1969 he went to University College Dublin to study English and History. He became involved in student theatre there, where he met director Neil Jordan. During the 1970s, the Sheridan brothers were closely associated with Dublin’s Project Theatre and they staged a number of plays, including The Liberty Suit (1977). In 1981 Sheridan emigrated to Canada and then to New York. His family's experiences in New York later formed the basis for the film In America. He undertook a six-week training course in filmmaking at New York University and he also ran the New York Irish Arts Center. While in New York he also wrote the screenplay for Into the West (1992), directed by Mike Newell. He returned to Ireland in the late 1980s and in 1989, he directed My Left Foot, which became a critical and commercial success and won two Academy Awards©. He directed The Field in 1990 and the controversial and critically acclaimed In the Name of the Father in 1993, which was a fictionalized re-telling of the case of the Guildford Four. In 1996 he produced and co-wrote Some Mother's Son with Terry George. Sheridan directed The Boxer in 1997 which was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Film Drama. In 2003, Sheridan directed In America scripted by Jim Sheridan and his daughters Naomi Sheridan and Kirsten Sheridan. The film earned Samantha Morton and Djimon Hounsou Academy Award© nominations. This was followed by a fictionalised biopic of rapper 50 Cent Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005), the first film directed by Sheridan which was not on an Irish topic.

• Archival History ↴

  The Collection was donated to the Irish Film Archive following the closure of Hell's Kitchen's Dublin office in 2009.

• Immediate Source Acquisition ↴

  Donation