From Gortaglanna to the Galtymore: Film and community storytelling networks

Leo Finucane bought his first camera in 1978 and used his first reel of Super 8 film to record an interview with Donal Bill Sullivan about a roadside execution in Gortaglanna in 1921. Bryan McMahon memorialised the event in the song “The Valley of Knockanure" and Finucane cites Peggy Sweeney's song of the same title.

Finucane turned folk song and oral history into narrative cinema with a film called The Gortaglanna Tragedy (1978), which he shot in the valley of Knockanure in collaboration with sixty or so community members. He went on to make 18 narrative films and showed Hard Times to a full house in the legendary Galtymore dance hall in London, an important venue for Irish people living and working in London.

Hard Times travelled through informal community networks that connected Ballydonoghue, Bruff, Knocknagoshel, and Listowel with Irish communities in the UK. Tom Dillon of Glanderry filmed Irish "reunions" at St Joseph's Hall in London and Ted Sweeney was involved in the GAA in Manchester. They met Finucane in Kerry Writers' Museum earlier this year we continue that conversation. We will explore how these networks operated, how they acquired and shared Hard Times and other heritage assets, what these assets meant to Irish communities in the UK and why these stories matter now.

Places limited. Advance booking essential.

[Photo: Celene Natacha Murphy films Leo Finucane telling the story of what happened at Gortaglanna in the valley of Knockanure in 1921 (© Kerry Writers' Museum).]

RELATED EVENTS

Kerry Writers' Museum contributes to Heritage Week with an exciting programme of workshops, screenings and talks that explore the heritage value of film and digital media used to generate personal and community memories and networks.

Daily screenings hosted by filmmakers will celebrate a vibrant and diverse movement in storytelling-in-film that has a long history in North Kerry; beginning with travelling road shows in the 1920s and continuing at the cutting edge of Irish art and climate activism.

A workshop in "pinhole" photography recaptures the extraordinary heritage of the camera obscura.

Musical heritage features in a short film about a trip to the Fleadh Nua in Ennis in 1974. Members of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann reconnect with the fleadh's legacy and perform a new musical accompaniment.

The Barna Way Organic Farm is the venue for an exploration of a new generation of community filmmakers.

We celebrate the art of cinema with the screening of a short film of the butchering of a pig in Kissane's farmyard in 1978.

Community storytelling - the most intangible of heritage assets - is explored through a film shot in Moyvane, shown in London and distributed though community networks that connected London, Manchester and north Kerry.

The week ends with workshops in analogue filmmaking and collection management/sharing for anyone who has film and digital media at home.

Kerry Writers' Museum acknowledges the support of the Heritage Council, the Listowel Duagh Branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and the department of Media Studies, Maynooth University.