It’s the community boatyard whose work has had a positive impact on the people of Cork and beyond for decades. Now the groundbreaking work of Meitheal Mara – which translates roughly as ‘Community of the Sea’ is about to be depicted in a new documentary feature.
Meitheal Mara – The Voyage will debut at this year’s IndieCork film festival (The Arc Cinema, October 6-13) featuring the work of filmmakers from 27 countries across the world.
This includes the documentary from Cork-based Frameworks Films, founded in 1999 by filmmakers Eddie Noonan and Emma Bowell. The work of Meitheal Mara had been on their radar for some time.
“We share a similar ethos in that as filmmakers in some of our work, we use the medium of film to work with groups and organisations in the whole area of community development, but also trying to tell the story of the city and people,” says Bowell, who directed the film.
“Meitheal Mara uses the medium of boat building to encourage that personal and community development. Eddie would have met Pádraig Ó Duinnín, who’s one of the founders of Meitheal Mara. Even before Frameworks was set up, he would have been involved in documenting and filming some of the activities that they would have done.”
Keen to highlight their work and tell their story, the filmmakers started planning a documentary. “We just thought: this is a story. They’ve done so much, and they’re not really ones to blow their own trumpet. They’ve done a lot for a lot of people in the city in a really interesting way. We thought this is a story that deserves to be told. We put in an application to Coimisiún na Meán [formerly the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland]. We were successful through the Sound and Vision scheme in getting some funding to do the documentary.”
The film centres on the story of the community boatyard and its huge impacts over the years, not just in teaching traditional boatbuilding skills but its focus on the personal development of its participants. The documentary also explores the city’s maritime culture and history, with the River Lee at the centre of the city.
“One of the things we really wanted to do was to be able to spend time in Crosses Green, in the community boatyard, which is really where it all happens, even though obviously they do a lot out on the river,” says Bowell. “Just being there – and particularly in the workshop where the boats are built – as a filmmaker, there was the beauty of what was happening with the boats being turned from pieces of wood into these amazing, beautiful Irish currachs.
“In tandem with that was the process of people – people who were sometimes having difficulties and challenging times in their lives – being completely welcomed into this very nurturing space, and their transformation. It was amazing being able to witness that.
“They are also serious boat builders and really passionate about Irish and culture and the history and heritage of boats, and all of that side of the craftsmanship. And then, the river is such an amazing subject for a film, you could just do a whole piece on that too. That whole amazing history there, of the river itself. It was really engaging as a filmmaker, to be able to work with some of those ideas and blend them together.”
Making the film involved close collaboration with the people behind Meitheal Mara, whose currachs include the naomhóg, whose roots are in West Kerry, and the dunfanaghy, commonly associated with Donegal.
“Our way of working is very collaborative,” says Bowell. “It’s very much where we sit down and form a working group between ourselves and them, to really tease out the film and the ideas for it, and involving people as much as possible in the whole production side of it as well.”
Meitheal Mara – The Voyage marks the latest production from Frameworks Films, and the filmmakers are excited at the prospect of unveiling it at IndieCork. “IndieCork has been great to us as filmmakers. It’s a fantastic film festival for supporting local filmmakers and local film, and generate opportunities for filmmakers to meet their audiences,” says Bowell.
Bowell and Noonan first established Frameworks Films in 1999 with the goal of making thought-provoking films and working with various groups and organisations in Cork and the wider Munster region. They are currently establishing a not-for-profit organisation called Cork Community Media Hub.
“We’ve filmed and documented an awful lot of the social and cultural history of Cork over the past 30 years and we now have a huge archive of content that we’re hoping to properly preserve,” says Bowell. “We often draw then on the archive in our productions, and I think it helps to really enrich the pieces when we can draw on that archive.”
- Meitheal Mara – The Voyage screens at the Arc Cinema as part of IndieCork on Friday, October 11. See indiecork.com
Twenty-seven countries from across the world will be represented at this year’s IndieCork film festival, which will include a record number of entries from Cork city and county. The festival takes place at the Arc Cinema Cork from October 6 to 13 with documentaries, new feature films and a comprehensive shorts programme.
The opening-night film on Sunday, October 6, a French comedy-drama, centres on a woman who returns to her hometown and family, and the colourful characters who inhabit it.
Director John McDonald’s multi-award-winning film tells the story of a man who has chosen to wander across the US with his three mules by his side.
IndieCork partners with the Contemporary Music Centre and Screen Guild Composers of Ireland with events taking place at The Pavilion and Civic Trust House. The festival features a return of ‘Reaction’, which sees CMC members play live improvised music to short films.
A new documentary about Irish group The Stunning is part of a strand of music documentaries at IndieCork this year. It also includes Married to the Music, about house music star Sam Divine.
French filmmaker Frédéric Pelle returns to IndieCork after several visits, with his new feature. The drama is set in Auvergne in the 1950s, where an ageing cowherd has his life turned upside down by dramatic events.
