BIRDSONG preceded by CUMHA
Saturday, March 1 • 12:10 PM • T2
BIRDSONG
Q&A with director Kathleen Harris
Documentary Feature | North American Premiere | Woman Director | Debut Feature
Screening generously sponsored by Pat Reilly
Ornithologist Seán Ronayne from Cobh, County Cork, is on a mission to record the sound of every bird species in Ireland — nearly 200 birds. Often joined by his partner, Alba, he travels to some of the country’s most beautiful and remote locations to capture its most elusive species and soundscapes: the busy seabird colony of Skellig Michael; a native woodland free from road noise in the Burren; the corncrake stronghold of Tory Island; a solitary nest in the Donegal uplands. Along the way, the film also turns its focus to Seán, whose hypersensitivity to sound has proven both a struggle and a strength. At once inspiring and cautionary, Seán’s journey illustrates the beauty and importance of sound and what listening can tell us about the state of our natural world.
DIR Kathleen Harris; PROD Ross Whitaker, Aideen O’Sullivan; DOP Ross Bartley; SCORE Paul Finan Ireland, 2024, color, 52 min. NOT RATED
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Preceded by:
CUMHA
A personal exploration of the purpose of language and the loss that occurs when we no longer speak our native tongue. Through visits to places tied to her childhood and family, filmmaker Elena explores the connections between land, identity, and language, reflecting on the question: Without knowing my people, my land, or myself through my own language, am I missing a part of myself?
DIR/SCR/PROD Elena Horgan; SCR Siobhán Ní Dhomhnaill; PROD Ned Horgan. Ireland, 2023, color, 6 min. In English and Irish with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Kathleen Harris (BIRDSONG director) is an award-winning video journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Ireland. Until 2022, she worked at The Irish Times newspaper, where she directed, shot, and edited hundreds of videos and short documentaries on a wide range of topics, including grassroots environmental activism, reproductive rights, and migration crises in Europe and Asia. In 2021, she was named Irish Video Journalist of the Year for her coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic in a Dublin hospital. In 2022, she left the Irish Times to pursue long form filmmaking and BIRDSONG is her first film.
Elena Horgan (CUMHA director) is a youth and community worker, as well as filmmaker from Cork, currently living in Dublin City Centre. With an interest in personal filmmaking, she believes that the arts are an amazing tool for self actualisation, understanding and reflection.
The Capital Irish Film Festival is supported by the Government of Ireland Emigrant Support Programme, Culture Ireland, Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, Embassy of Ireland, Northern Ireland Bureau, Northern Ireland Screen, and the Irish Film Institute’s IFI International Programme supported by Culture Ireland. Solas Nua is supported by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
