Feature film
Poitín
Bob Quinn · 1978
Synopsis
In Connemara, Michil, a clandestine distiller of poitín, lives in an isolated house with his adult daughter, Máire. Two local men, Labhrás and Sleamhnán, covet his liquor and terrorise him, to the point of threatening to kill him and to rape his daughter. The story, reduced to almost nothing, mixes black humour with a strangeness close to surrealism.
Context
Written by Colm Bairéad, who had come to a film course given by the director, the film is shot on sixteen-millimetre in Carraroe, in natural light and for eighteen thousand pounds, with Cyril Cusack, Donal McCann and Niall Tóibín; McCann, who did not speak Irish, learns his lines phonetically. It was released in Carraroe on 25 February 1978. Broadcast by public television on St Patrick's Day 1979, it angers viewers who see in it an insult to the idealised image of the West.
Who it is for
A film of sixty-five minutes, entirely in Irish, dark and ironic, acted in part by local people.
Prizes and reception
The first feature film shot entirely in the Irish language, and one of the most discussed films of its time in the country.
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