Film festival is set to celebrate lives of ordinary, extraordinary Cork women

WHILE writer, director and actor Karen Minihan stresses she is no historian, she is nevertheless bringing the hidden stories of West Cork women involved in the founding of the Irish State to the fore.

Schull-based Karen has interviewed relatives of four women for a documentary based on her book, Extraordinary, Ordinary Women, published last year, featuring 13 women.

The screening, which also includes a film of Karen’s play, Home Rules, will premiere at the Fastnet Film Festival on May 24 at the Palace Cinema (Schull Harbour Hotel.)

The women, who lived from Ardgroom on the Beara Peninsula through to Clonakilty, “were amazing, competent and able and would have been incredibly humble about what they did,” says Karen.

“I completely believe they’ve been written out of history. Their role isn’t valued. I’m doing my bit to highlight it. I kind of feel I now know these women. History becomes so much closer when you do work like this.”

Karen says that historians, a lot of the time, are only now “coming to the stories. A lot of women were involved in Cumann Na mBan but I also wanted to bring out what I call the Protestant stories of some women”.

The documentary features the story of Bridget Noble (née Neill) who was married to a Protestant.

“There’s a suggestion that he left West Cork, maybe to find work in England. Bridget was disappeared by the IRA and was kept for about ten days in or around the Adrigole area. She was a feisty woman. It’s been suggested that she had given information to the RIC (Royal Irish Constabulary). She seemed to be in and out to the station in Castletownbere a lot. Perhaps she was looking for information about her husband, or perhaps she was giving information about the volunteers.

“Her hair was cut off by the IRA. Poignantly, her last purchase was a shawl.”

Another woman’s story in the documentary is that of Ellen Holland from Clonakilty. She devoted a lot of her time to the nationalist movement. Along with her sisters, Mary and Margaret Crowley, she set up the Letter Branch of Cumann na mBan.

“They lived on a farm. Their brothers were very involved (in the struggle) and their stories were told within the family. It’s only recently, especially through the Bureau of Military History records, that the information about what the sisters did has started to come out.

“They would have been catering for a great many men and washing and providing care for them. The house was also a HQ for a time with dispatches from there. And there was a typewriter there. The sisters were left behind while the lads were on the run.”

Rose O’Connell, from Skibbereen, owned a prominent butcher’s shop on Main Street. Rose’s grandson Reddy O’Regan spoke to Karen for the documentary about Rose’s sons who fell out over which side to take in the conflict.

Karen says that Rose O’Connell “was unbelievably strong. She was holding the family together. The feeling is that her husband liked to drink. It was she who was very involved in the business. Her son, Tommy, would have taken a pro-Treaty stance while his brother was anti-Treaty.”

Such tales of family division were rife during Ireland’s turbulent years of the War of Independence and the Civil War.

The documentary features May O’Driscoll, one of the well-known Hickey family. She lived in Skeaghnore, outside Ballydehob, and was secretary of her local Cumann na mBan. From carrying dispatches for the IRA to home nursing, May O’Driscoll’s life was impacted by her contribution to the republican cause.

“She was the link between her brother, Thomas Hickey, known as Sonny, and the rest of the volunteers.”

Karen spoke to May O’Driscoll’s daughter, Norah Jo Carey, who is in her nineties.

“She gave me certain bits of information on the family. But she didn’t know a lot of what had gone on. She would have known that there was a secret room in the family house and that her mother would have been very involved in catering and holding dispatches for the volunteers.”

As part of the screening, a film of Karen’s short play, Home Rules, will be shown, performed by Pauline O’Driscoll (who recently featured in the TV series, Sisters.) The play is based on Rose O’Connell. The setting of the story is 1935 but refers back to the period of the conflict when Rose was running the family business and witnessing her sons’ falling out.

The documentary was directed by Castletownshend native, Ciara Buckley, of Wombat Media, a video production company specialising in factual and narrative film. Ciara is “passionate about history and especially women’s stories from the War of Independence and the Civil War.”

She directed Engagement And Endurance: Cork City Women During the 1920s. When she heard about Karen’s book, she was immediately excited about the opportunity to make a documentary about women in West Cork.

Karen received a grant from the Heritage Council “for what I thought was going to be a pamphlet and a short play. The pamphlet became the book that I published last year. As I was trying to figure out what I was doing with the book, I applied to the Arts Council to do a performance around it, presenting the stories and my logic behind it. It was all the stuff I couldn’t put in the book.

“I got an Agility award from the Arts Council and did presentations around West Cork as well as Carrigtwohill (at the encouragement of a friend of Karen living in the East Cork town.)”

Clearly there is plenty of interest in Extraordinary Ordinary Women.

MORE ABOUT THE FASTNET FILM FESTIVAL

The Fastnet Film Festival is a major showcase for Irish and International short film production, focusing on the craft of film, held in high regard on a national and international level for several years now.

This year is will run a series of Seminars, Masterclasses and Workshops covering Action Scenes, Editing, Casting, Auditioning, Cinematography, Acting, Shorts to Feature, Funding, Foley Artistry, Score Composition, Regional Filmmaking and more.

Fringe events include live music, drama, book readings, movie quiz, and high quality, free family entertainment for all.

Guests to the festival are invited to visit Cape Clear for the Irish Language Film Day and to follow the Walking Trail around the Island, enjoying the curated Programme of Irish Language short films at various venues.

Back by popular demand is the outdoor screen in the park where the village will be treated to a free screening of An Cailín Ciúin and Academy Award nominated Wolwalkers.

Also, Anna Machukh, Executive director of the Ukrainian Film Academy, and General Director of Odesa International Film Festival, and Daryna Trehubova, Ukrainian actress and TV presenter, have brought a curated programme of Ukrainian films to the film festival.

For more on the line-up see www.fastnetfilmfestival.com or you can follow them on Facebook.com/fastnetfilmfestival