Screening followed by discussion with the directors
The lineage of incisive Irish documentary-making is celebrated by works from artists old and new, including no wave darling Vivienne Dick’s 'The Irreducible Difference of the Other', Pat Collins' and Sharon Whooley's 'Fathom' and Tadhg O'Sullivan's 'What Remains.' Daniel Fitzpatrick of Experimental Film Club joins the discussion too.
'The Irreducible Difference of the Other,' questions what it means to be human in a world orientated towards war, terror, and consumption with Franco-Irish actress Olwen Fouéré inhabiting the two personas of Antonin Artaud and Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Key historical moments are referenced, including opposition to the Iraq war, the Arab Spring and recent anti- austerity protests, proclaiming the desire for a world which is more balanced, and which focuses less on exploitation and destruction. An implicit critique of the male paradigm is embodied by the structure of the film – a richly textured weaving of sound and images – which posits the need for a renewal of relationship on both a personal and global level.
Vivienne Dick has been making films and installations for thirty five years, though is best known for a burst of work in NYC in the late '70s and early '80s when she was part of what has become known as the No Wave scene. Together with an unruly cast of artists and musicians (notably Pat Place and Lydia Lunch) Dick helped create a vortex of nihilistic glamour that sustains the East Village to this day. Dick’s films, which often display a fractured narrative, stops and starts, off camera voices and rough cut production qualities, are suffused with personality, intimacy and political strength.These early works including Guérillère Talks (1978), She Had Her Gun All Ready (1978) and Liberty’s Booty (1980) are regularly shown in international museums as exemplars of an era when a tough aesthetic was probably the only option available. Having returned to Ireland in the '80s, she continued to create films that somehow refused--and indeed continue to refuse--to comply with the rules, despite displaying a serenity that only superficially offers thematic resolution.
'Fathom'
'Fathom' is a non-narrative, meditative film on isolation and thinking framed by the Fastnet Lighthouse off the southwest coast of Ireland.
Sharon Whooley was Editor of ‘Film West’ magazine from 1998 to 2001 and is a founding director of Harvest Films. She is the co-writer of the feature film Silence which was released in cinemas in 2012. She produced Tim Robinson: Connemara (2011) a Reel Art Recipient in 2011. She co-directed The Nettle Coat as part of the Arts Council’s Into the Light scheme in 2012. She co-directed Fathom which was the recipient of an Arts Council Project Award in 2012 and was shown at the Absolut Gallery at Galway Arts Festival in July 2013 and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in August 2013. She has been co-curator of Skibbereen Arts Festival for the past five years, specifically the film and visual art strands.
Since 1999 Pat Collins has made over 25 films. His first film Michael Hartnett, Necklace of Wrens won the Jury Award at the Celtic Film Festival in 2000. Since then he has directed Talking to the Dead which centred on the Irish funeral tradition. This was followed by Oiléan Thoraí, which won Best Irish Documentary at the Irish Film and Television Awards in 2003. Abbas Kiarostami - The Art of Living (co-directed with Fergus Daly) was picked up for international distribution in 2004 by the French company MK2. Rebel County used the shooting of Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley to explore the War of Independence in West Cork. He has directed documentaries on the Irish writer Frank O' Connor, the poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and the Connemara based writer and cartographer Tim Robinson. His film John McGahern: A Private World won ‘Best Irish Documentary’ at the Irish Film and Television Awards in 2005. In the same year his documentary Marooned won the Best Irish Sports Documentary award. The feature documentary Gabriel Byrne: Stories from Home was completed in 2009 and the film essay What We Leave in Our Wake in 2011. He completed his first feature film Silence in 2012 which has just been released by New Wave Films in the UK. In 2013 he completed two short experimental works What Remains, co-directed with Tadhg O’Sullivan and Fathom which he co-directed with Sharon Whooley. His latest film Living in a Coded Land was awarded ‘Best Irish Documentary’ by the Dubiln Film Critics Circle at Dublin Film Festival 2014.
'What Remains'
'What Remains' is a dynamic assemblage of images selected from personal film collections preserved in the IFI Film Archive.
Tadhg O'Sullivan is a film-maker, editor, sound designer and sound recordist. His work has been supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, the Irish Film Board and a number of international broadcasters. He has collaborated as editor and sound designer with many leading Irish film makers and artists. Having recently completed his first feature documentary (Yximalloo, directed with Feargal Ward), he is currently working on a new feature on European borders -based on a Kafka short story - and a shorter work about cycles of time on an industrial landscape.