Documentary
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2025- De Valera san Fhásach / De Valera the Wilderness Years
2 x 50mins TG4 Writer/ Director/ Producer This was one of those documentaries where I really felt that history matters. That history is the story of how we got to where we are and why things are the way they are now. That history really impacts on the now. De Valera in 1923 looked like he was finished - he'd lost the Civil War and was thrown in prison yet somehow he managed to stage one of the most astounding political comebacks ever. The story of this comeback intertwines with that of an entire generation of radical revolutionary women whose lives I have been telling over several documentaries at this stage. In this two part series, I finally got to tell their swansong -how these women supported de Valera back into power on the promise of gender equality - only to be finally and completely betrayed by him in the 1930's. It would take until the 70's for the fight for gender equality in Ireland to be a force again. 2023 - Croíthe Radacacha / Radical Hearts Feature Documentary TG4 Writer / Director / Producer I loved making this feature documentary on the lives of eight same sex female couples who were at the heart of the Irish Revolution and who fought in so many ways to shape and define what the new modern Ireland would become. What really struck me while making it was how contemporary and modern many of the women felt - they lived radical lives outside the norm with their ability to redefine notions of family and gender identity. What also really struck me during the making of this is how important it is to write LGBTQ+ lives back into the history of Ireland and just how much that representation matters. 2022 “Forgotten: the Widows of the Irish Revolution” 50mins RTÉ Writer/ Director/ Producer Women hold up half the sky but often history can feel as if the female population was simply absent from the country during the Irish Revolution. Much has been made of the men who were executed in 1916, but nobody ever thinks of the women and children they left behind. I wanted to tell the stories of these women and how they held themselves and their families together in the aftermath. I wanted people to know just how truly heroic these women were in their own right and to pose the question of whether it was in fact braver to die for Ireland or to keep on living for it? 2022 ‘Eipidéim/ Epidemic’ 2 x 50 mins TG4 Writer/ Director/ Producer As the whole world stopped and we were all in lockdown I remember thinking that, although this was for most of us our first real experience of an epidemic, in the past these things were a regular occurrence and part of normal life for people. This was weirdly comforting for me - after all humanity had survived many such epidemics in the past - and it gave me hope that we'd come out the other side of this one too. From this, my very personal attempt to come to terms with finding myself in the midst of a pandemic, was born this two part series for TG4 on the great epidemics of the past such as Smallpox, Cholera, Polio and Tuberculosis how we survived them and how they influenced our approach to Covid 19. 2020 ‘Cogadh ar Mhná / A War on Women’ 50mins TG4/ RTÉ Writer/ Director This documentary is very close to my heart. It told the stories of women who experienced sexual violence during the Irish Revolution from all sides of the conflict. It was an extraordinary privilege to be able to tell what happened to these women in their own words, using their own testimony from a hundred years ago, testimony that in many cases was buried and deliberately silenced at the time. It was an honour to finally bring their words out into the light and have them be heard. It was also a huge privilege to work with an extraordinary cast of actors to recreate these stories and to do so in a very sensitive but impactful way. Prep for this documentary included Directing Intimate Scenes training in London. 2020 -‘74 days: Inside Terence MacSwiney’s Hunger Strike’ 50mins RTÉ Writer/ Director Hunger strikes have always fascinated me - what must it take to believe in something so strongly that you would deny yourself food for it? And what must it take out of the people who love you and are there by your side while you do it? Hunger striking is the ultimate non-violent protest, a way of wanting to be heard when you feel you have no other voice. Terence MacSwiney's hunger strike in 1920 served as a blueprint for many subsequent human rights campaigners including Ho Chi Minh, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. I felt very privileged to be able to access the original doctor's notes from MacSwiney's hunger strike and to be able to recreate it day by day from them for this documentary. 2019 - De Valera i Meiriceá/ De Valera in America Writer/ Director De Valera - like him or loathe him you can't ignore him. He dominated Irish politics for over 50 years, asserting outsize influence over what modern Ireland became. And we are still dealing with the repercussions of his legacy today. But what made him into the great political survivor that he became? The answer is found in the maelstrom of a formative political tour of America in 1919/20 that almost ended his career before it began. |