Patrick Kavanagh Documentary Wins Major Award at Boston Irish Film Festival
Irish documentary Patrick Kavanagh - No Man¹s Fool has won the BIFF Award for best documentary at the Boston Irish Film Festival.Directed by Sé Merry Doyle, the film is a rich visual journey exposing the contradiction that existed between Kavanagh's public persona and his poetry. It probes the complexity of the outsider complex that Kavanagh cultivated throughout his life and the way in which he inspired love and loathing in equal measure. It reveals what happened when he took a disastrous libel case that nearly broke him.
The main locations of the film are his native Inniskeen in County Monaghan and Dublin where he spent most of his life. Against the odds he survived great poverty and ill health to deliver a canon of powerful and evocative poetry. Contributors to the film include TP McKenna, John Montague, Leland Bardwell, Macdara Woods and Dermot Healy. There is also an appearance by Kavanagh¹s one time girlfriend Deirdre Manifold and with acclaimed actor, Gerard McSorley reads Kavanagh¹s poems.
The script is by Stephen Walsh (WHEN HARRY BECAME A TREE) and the film features haunting landscapes filmed by John T Davis and Michael O Donovan. Patrick Kavanagh - No Man¹s Fool is was produced by Loopline Films with finance from Bord Scannan na hEireann/the irish Film Board and RTE.
Audiences will get an oppertunity to see the film at the 50th Cork Film Festival on October 15th.