Archive News
From Russia with love as TV series explores cultural links
Date Published: 20-Feb-2013
A Russian who has legally changed his name to Seán O’Brien and runs an Irish Republican themed bar in Moscow, is set to feature in a new four-part documentary being broadcast on TG4 from next Thursday. He will be seen alongside a man who has Irish language tattoos all over his body and who refers to Ireland as ‘the land of freedom’.
These are among the participants in Radharc na Rúise, the work of Galway based Counterpoint Films which is run by husband and wife team Colm Hogan and Marina Levitina.
The two met in 2002, when Marina first came to Ireland to work on a documentary on the late philosopher, poet and priest, John O’Donohue. Moscow-born Marina had been introduced to the world of filmmaking in the 1990s when American filmmaker Betty Scarborough made a documentary on her family during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Inspired by that experience, Marina spent a decade in America where she studied film production and graduated with an MA from Harvard. Some years later Betsy invited her to Ireland as co-producer of a film on John O’Donohue. They hired Colm Hogan as a camera man – a fateful decision.
Marina and Colm fell in love and she moved to Ireland. The got married with John O’Donohue performing the ceremony. Marina continued her studies in Trinity where she got a PhD in Russian film and culture. She now lectures in film in Trinity and in NUIG while Colm works mainly as a stills photographer specialising in film, television, theatre, dance and documentary. The couple live in Cloughanover, outside Headford, and they jointly operate Counterpoint Films, which previously produced John O’Donoghue; Anam Cara in 2008 and Kingerlee in 2011.
The beautifully shot Radharc na Rúise is their latest project.
“Because I’m Russian and Colm is Irish we are curious about the Russian-Irish connection,” says Marina. “And when I go back to Moscow, I’ve always noticed the appreciation for the Irish in Russia – even people who have never been here. It’s amazing the positive reaction you get when you mention the word Ireland.”
Writers including Brian Friel, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Martin McDonagh are very popular among theatre goers in St Petersburg. In addition, an improvised traditional Irish music is popular among some Russians, explains Marina.
“There’s also a lot of interest in Irish history and the relationship between Ireland and England.”
She’s not saying everybody in Russia knows or cares about Ireland, but there is a lot of interest, as is captured in the interviews for this series.
“Some of these people have never been to Ireland, so it’s an imagined Ireland sometimes. There are people who have never visited but who are deeply passionate about Irish culture.”
These include a young woman, Ilona whose walls are covered in photos of Pádraig Pearse and Michael Collins. She works in education and lectures people on Irish culture. Despite never having been here, Ilona has a profound knowledge of, and passion for all things Irish, especially our culture.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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