IS there a conspiracy afoot in the Irish film industry? Alexander Walker, film critic of the Evening Standard in London, seems to think so, judging by his report from the Cannes Film Festival on the world premiere of an Irish film.

"The Irish Film Board brought Some Mother's Son to Cannes and the British government won't be happy with its emotionally loaded depiction of the Maze prisoners hunger strike in 1981..." wrote Walker (who is originally from Portadown, Co Armagh.) "The bias in these propaganda films - like this one and Nothing Personal, which is opening in London in the autumn and is about loyalist terrorists in Ulster - suggests that the Irish Republic is now sponsoring more than a film industry."

The Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins, scorns the implication that his Department is promoting political propaganda. "Alexander Walker made this same point about Nothing Personal in a discussion after my talk to the British Film Institute in London last October. I pointed out to him then that, as the Minister responsible, I did not believe in censorship of artistic work.

"Since I became a Minister, I have never sought to read, or express an opinion on, any script submitted to Bord Scannan na hEireann, RTE in general or its Independent Productions Unit in particular," says Mr Higgins. "On the occasion of his first making these remarks, I found it offensive that Mr Walker seemed to impute, not just to me, but to everybody involved in Irish film making, some secret, subversive agenda. Irish artists are better than that, as he should know."

Lelia Doolan, chairwoman of the Film Board, points out that the board's function is essentially reactive. "We are there to be approached with projects. But, out of around 120 feature film projects we have supported, I would estimate that eight or so are about the Troubles. In every case, the board is interested in supporting quality and authenticity. We're looking for works of art, not works of politics.

In addition to Some Mother's, Son and Nothing Personal, two" other films set against the backdrop of the Troubles were shot in 1995 and are due for release this year. Whatever the reaction to these films, it is seriously misleading to describe them as "brought to Cannes by the Irish Film Board" or "sponsored by the Irish Republic".

TRYING to contact the makers of Some Mother's Son in Cannes, I was directed to the publicity department of Castle Rock, the American production company which put up the lion's share of the film's budget. Film financing is a complex, often arcane business, and there is no such thing these days as an Irish film which is totally funded from within the State. Most of the money for Nothing Personal, ironically, came from Channel 4 and the funding agency British Screen.

The fact that four films on the Troubles went into production last year partly reflects the unprecedented level of production in 1995, but may also be a product of the moment of hope during the IRA ceasefire. But the green light had to come from international financiers, whose backing for an Irish film is much harder to achieve than the relatively straightforward support from the Film Board or tax incentives.

In a country where history is so fiercely contested, where stands the Troubles movie, especially when it's set in as recent a past as are Some Mother's Son or Nothing Personal? It has become a truism that historical films tell us far more about the time in which they were made than the era they depict.

Kevin Rockett's recently published Irish Filmography lists 100 films made by Irish film makers on Irish subjects over the last century, in contrast with more than 2,000 Irish subject films made by foreigners. Only in the last 20 years has there been an attempt to develop an indigenous Irish film culture.

One of the most explicit aims of that project has been to redress the stereotypes of Irishness created by British and American movies. With regard to the Troubles, this has led to a critique of the way "foreign" films decontextualise political violence and depict it as irrational and psychopathic.

But feature film drama has great difficulty rendering political complexities. This is particularly true of mainstream, American influenced cinema, which traditionally forces its audience into identification with a single point of view. Is there a danger that one set of stereotypes will merely be replaced by another?

"As political history, much of it is pure fiction," writes Alexander Walker of Some Mother's Son. "And the English in it are universally represented as public school types or white collar martinets or self serving, fruity voiced blimps."

"Alexander Walker is coming from a particular political perspective, but he's correct insofar as we do believe that the intransigence of the Thatcher government contributed in large part to this tragedy", says Arthur Lappin, who produced the new film, as well as Jim Sheridan's In The Name Of The Father. "That's not to mitigate or excuse the crimes for which the prisoners were convicted, but there were a lot of upperclass, public school types representing the British ad ministration, and they were a contributing factor to the lack of understanding or sympathy on the British side.

"We're certainly not proselytising for the IRA but the film does try to redress a media imbalance regarding the hunger strikes".

THE other concern raised about making such films' at this time centres on their effect upon the current political situation, and on the pain they may cause to the victims of violence. On UTV's Counterpoint programme two weeks ago, nothing Personal's director, Thaddeus O'Sullivan, was severely criticised for making a film "which I could inflame passions at this time.

"I just don't think you can afford to wait until everyone is happy," says Mr O'Sullivan. "You would have to wait an awfully long time. Look at the way some people are already starting to express concern about Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, because they're worried at how it might depict physical force republicanism."

Nothing Personal's distribution in the UK was postponed by Channel 4 after the Canary Wharf bombing but the film is currently on release in the North and the Republic.

It's unlikely, however, that similar controversy would attend novels or paintings about the Troubles. The ambivalence towards movies reflects a deep distrust and snobbery about filmmakers' intentions and their potential effect on mass audiences. It's inevitable that the ways in which these stories are told will be partly shaped by the requirements of the market and the expectations of that audience.

"I would love to have made a film that caught all the intricacies and political intrigue of Belfast in the 1970s," says Mr O'Sullivan. "But that kind of story is unfinancable. The only thing I could confront is the personal consequence of the situation."

"Ultimately, history will judge these films," says Ms Doolan. "At the moment there is a ferment of ideas out there, and this is just one part of that."