GAZA takes home Pull Focus Award for Best Documentary at Docs Ireland
Posted: 22nd June 2019
Two Screen Ireland-supported documentaries have been honoured at this year's inaugural Docs Ireland, the first industry-focused, all-Ireland International Documentary Festival,
Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell's GAZA was awarded the Pull Focus Award for Best New Irish Documentary in the inaugural year of festival, while Keith Walsh and Jill Beardsworth's When All Is Ruin Once Again was given a special mention for its "artistic purpose and intellectual rigour".
The documentary is directed and produced by Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell for Real Films and Brendan Byrne for Fine Point Films alongside Paul Cadieux. Bringing us to a unique place beyond the reach of television and politics, GAZA presents a portrait of a group of eloquent, funny, resilient, courageous and above all ordinary people who attempt to lead meaningful lives beyond the rubble of perennial conflict.
The judges for this year's Pull Focus Award were documentarian Dónal Ó Céilleachair (The Camino Voyage), Kabosh Theatre’s CEO, Paula McFetridge and the Irish Film Institute’s Head of Irish Programming, Sunniva O’Flynn.
"Gaza is a masterfully crafted portrait of life in the war-torn Gaza strip. It is cinematic in intent and delivery. The filmmakers secured an impressive level of access to public and private spaces in a territory notorious for its restrictions. Its cinematography, orchestral score and smart editing deftly draws together stories from a broad cast of characters to create an engaging, energetic, coherent whole. The film adds compelling human texture and narrative heft to a story that is otherwise told through agenda-driven news bulletins to which viewers are easily inured. In so doing the filmmakers have dignified the inhabitants of this conflict zone and served them well in bringing their plight to an international stage. Gaza carefully illuminates the viewer and ennobles its subjects."
When All Is Ruin Once Again received a Special Mention from the jury. In this poetic documentary from director Keith Walsh, who lives on the South Galway/Clare border where the documentary was made, a myriad of personalities weave an epic tapestry through the bog lands, farms, firesides, race tracks and hurling pitches of recession Ireland.
"The jury highly commends Keith Walsh and Jill Beardsworth for their production of this fine impressionistic documentary essay. The film has admirably lofty ambitions exploring community and memory, modernity and impermanence through interweaving of poetry, some visual abstraction and a wealth of classic ethnographic tropes. The filmmakers are embedded in the community and capture serendipitous moments – some poignant, some funny, some mundane -to create a vivid slice of Irish village life that is neither local nor national but universal in its resonance. The filmmakers approach their subject with artistic purpose and intellectual rigour but also with a playfulness and agility which allows them to present their Gort neighbours with humanity and affection."
It has also been announced that the filmmakers behind GAZA have launched an appeal to restore a film festival in Gaza, donating the Pull Focus Award prize money of £2,500 to the Gaza Red Carpet Human Rights Film Festival appeal.