Mick O’Dea PRHA is one of Ireland’s leading painters. His diverse range of work includes a ten-year study of Ireland’s War of Independence, culled from found and researched images. He pulls the heart out of these reproductions, breathing the living present into our imagined past. As the artist prepares a monumental exhibition in central Dublin for the centenary of the easter rising, a film crew attempt to document the journey. Amidst the collision of history, memory and imagination, reality itself soon becomes an elusive combatant.
Filmed & Directed by: Emile Dinneen
Producer: Paul Duane, Screenworks
Editor: Jackie Jarvis
Cinematography: Basil Al-Rawi
Music: Oli Ryan
Running time: 42 minutes
“Alternating between the playful, poetic and profound, Dinneen’s film on painter Mick O’Dea’s seminal exhibition eschews the traditional artist biography for an unusual take on the process of artistic creation, gathering an explosive momentum from within all the doubt, confusion and blind alleys inherent in creating groundbreaking work, and emerging with something altogether unique” Irish Film Institute