10th Annual Cinegael Buffalo 2013 Hidden Ireland: A celebration of Ireland in documentary film 1927-2012

riverrun and the Irish Film Institute present Hidden Ireland, a free series of 20 films about Ireland from the archives of the Irish Film Institute on October 18-19 at the Burchfield Penney. All films are free and open to the public. Download the poster here.

11:00 a.m.
Ireland: The Tear and the Smile (USA)
1959, b&w, 50 minutes
Hosted by the legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite, Ireland: The Tear and the Smile presents a social, political, and economic overview of Ireland in the late 1950s. Describing an Ireland that is “convivial and garrulous…half truth, half myth,” the film examines how close the traditional American image of Ireland is to the reality. The film features interviews with leading thinkers, writers, and policy makers – including Sean O’Faolain, Brendan Behan, and Eamon de Valera – and a series of arresting sequences showing Irish rural and urban life.
Directed by Willard Van Dyke for CBS

1:00 p.m.
The Village(USA)
1967, b&w, 70 minutes
Made by UCLA’s Ethnographic Film Program, this film visits Dunquin in Co. Kerry and examines how modernization has affected the inhabitants of this remote Irish-speaking fishing village in the southernmost part of Ireland. The film explores their connection with the nearby (and since evacuated) Blasket Islands and their relationship with visitors who come to observe them. The film particularly notes how the tourists who come to the village year after year to steep themselves in its old culture don’t understand how their presence only accelerates its disappearance.

The Village records day-to-day life – much of it spent servicing the visitors – with many moments of wry comedy provided by the locals. Among these are the elderly and deaf motorcyclist, the amateur linguist, and innkeeper “Kruger” Kavanagh, who recalls his visits to Broadway and his connection with Randolph Hearst.
Directed by Paul Hockings and Mark McCarty

3:00 p.m.
Hard Road to Klondike (Ireland)
1999, color, 55 minutes
Based on the biography of Mici MacGabhann (1865-1948) of Donegal, titled Rotha Mor an
tsaoil (The Big Wheel of Life), this is an account of MacGabhann’s life as a migrant worker and
exile in America at the turn of the 20th Century. Mixing actual footage with early fiction films,
this colorful and innovative documentary tells the story of Irish emigrant history in a most
creative and entertaining manner.
Directed by Desmond Bell

O’Hara’s Holiday(Ireland)
1959, color, 20 minutes
This engaging dramatized documentary part-sponsored by Bord Failte, the Irish Tourist Board,
was one of a series of films aimed at the US market which centered on the theme of returning
migrants. In homage to Ford’s “The Quiet Man,” we meet O’Hara, a stressed out New York
Irish police officer who comes to Ireland to unwind and find his roots. He meets an independent
young woman, Kitty, who joins him on his travels to the beauty spots of rural Ireland and the
hotspots of Dublin’s nightlife.
Directed by Peter Bryan

Give Up Your Aul Sins (Ireland)
2000 (recordings of Dublin schoolrooms, 1960s), color, 5 minutes
Directed by Cathal Gaffney

7:00 p.m.
Two Short Films by Tony Donoghue (Ireland) with Introduction by Tony Donoghue:

A Film From My Parish - 6 Farms
2008, color, 7 minutes
Irish Folk Furniture
2012, color, 9 minutes
Directed by Tony Donoghue

Talk by Tony Donoghue:
“Documentary Filmmaking: Friends and Family”
Tony Donoghue worked as a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London before
becoming a filmmaker. He studied animation at West Surrey College of Art and now researches
farm and rural traditions. It is from this research that his film and photography projects
originated. His focus is to work with recycled resources to make animated films by locating
recycled goods and using mainly natural light to light the sets. Currently he is photographing
and studying late 18th- and 19th-century gravestones which will culminate in a guidebook
commissioned by the local county Heritage Office. His most recent film, “Irish Folk Furniture”,
has won awards around the world, including the 2013 Short Film Jury Award at Sundance.
Donoghue’s recent projects include design work and workshops at The Ark, a Cultural Centre
for Children in Dublin, Ireland.

What We Leave in Our Wake (Ireland)
2010, color, 70 minutes
What We Leave in Our Wake is a filmic essay that unfolds as a series of conversations on Ireland exploring themes of emigration, mythology, consumerism, socialism, the place of the Church in Irish life, the central role of land in Irish history, the sense of a civic society, and differences between urban and rural Ireland, the local and the universal. Combining images of contemporary Ireland with an evocative blend of archival footage, this searching documentary investigates what it is that persists rather than what is transient, and talks to some of those uniquely placed to comment on how this country has evolved.
Directed by Pat Collins