tadhg o'sullivan / inland films

An artist, isolated from the world but not from her memories, unpacks the remnants of a life long-lived and tries to make sense of her own unwillingness to let go.  

Feature film funded by The Arts Council

International Premiere at Telluride 2024

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A cinematic ode to the moon. Structured as a lunar cycle, the film moves through tales of love, songs of longing, myths of madness, dreams of innocence and the nightmare of colonialism, building to a timely reminder of our fragility beneath the moon's mysterious light.

www.tothemoon.ie

'The Great Wall has been completed at its most southerly point'. So begins Kafka’s short story 'At the Building of the Great Wall of China', and so, at Europe’s heavily militarised south-eastern frontier, begins this film. In the shadow of its own narratives of freedom, Europe has been building its own great wall. Like its Chinese precursor, this wall has been piecemeal in construction, diverse in form and dubious in utility. 'The Great Wall' moves across fortified landscapes, pausing with those whose lives are framed by borders. Moving inward toward the seat of power, the film holds the European project up to a dazzling cinematic light, refracted through Kafka’s mysterious text; ultimately questioning the nature of power. See www.thegreatwall.eu for screening info and press.

www.thegreatwall.eu

A unique observational documentary exploring the difficult life and obscure work of the cult Japanese musician of the same name. Part-funded by the Irish Film Board. Winner of the Prix Premier for first feature at FiD Marseille 2014.

A narrow Dublin street of bustling barristers, bowed street-drinkers, box-ticking tourists, broke or broken seekers-of-a-free-lunch. An urban film-portrait that hurries and slows to the criss-crossing paces of a hundred passers-by. Funded by the Arts Council.

Produced for Cork Midsummer Festival, 2021

An impressionistic journey through the carefully preserved artefacts of the Irish Film Archive, this mysterious and captivating visual poem drifts and flows around the space between record and memory.

Part of a project that created scores for journeys by artist Fiona Hallinan.

A poetic portrait of an inner city Dublin boxing club, the characters who frequent it and the area surrounding it. An uncommissioned, self-funded work, Boxing was shot over several months and combines observational strands, staged elements and still photographs to create a study of masculinity and the city.

Music video for the track 'Comme Un Ange Enivré D'un Soleil Radieux' from the album Caduceus by Akira Rabelais

Each Tuesday, in St. Luke's hospital in Dublin, the door to Radioactive Iodine Suite B is shut behind a patient who remains there, alone, until the end of the week. Funded through the Irish Film Board's shorts scheme, Quarantine is an intimate portrait of one woman's solitary time with illness, fate and faith. Co-produced by Pat Collins, Harvest Films.

Short film for TG4 looking at a century of Irish art

A short film about artist Karl Burke as he installs new work alongside an exhibition of the Arts Council's collection at the Hugh Lane, Dublin. Commissioned by the Arts Council and RTÉ as part of the 'Into the Light' series, the film was broadcast as part of RTÉ1's arts show 'The Works' in 2012.

Made for Al Jazeera's Witness strand in 2009, a documentary about a small television station called AQTV in Ramallah, Palestine.

A four part series of short films for Channel 4 about people and technology.

A radio essay about Chernobyl and how nature will be fine when we are gone.

A sonic reworking of the feature film 'Silence'. Limited edition CD available on Farpoint Recordings

A project by artist Fiona Hallinan in which scores are created for roads and other sites. This is one of a number of short audio works made for 'Five Scores for the Military Road' and features parts of tracks by Caoimhín Ó Raghaillaigh and Arrow-Shower. www.heterodyneprojects.com  Image courtesy Sean Breithaupt.

An immersive sonic programme put together for Skibbereen Arts Festival in response to Judith Pearlman's film of Glenn Gould's The Idea of North. Featuring an eclectic range of music and audio works that deal with journeying - mentally or physically - towards this most mysterious end of the earth.

Two Irelands dramatically collide in Feargal Ward’s critically acclaimed and award-winning new Irish film The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid. This highly cinematic, immersive documentary film tells the remarkable story of a farmer's battle against the state agency which attempts to compulsorily seize his lands.

A poetic and imaginative film essay that makes unexpected links between events and locations, history and contemporary life. The film revolves around the notion of a sense of place and stories associated with place, reflecting on the subterranean traces of the past in the present and probing themes such as the impact of colonialism, emigration, the famine, land, housing and the place of art in society.  Making extensive use of archive from RTÉ and the IFI, the film seeks to explore the more elusive layers of meaning that make up this country.

A feature drama starring Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde as a sound recordist returning to Ireland for a quixotic project, Silence is influenced by elements of folklore and archive and unfolds with a quiet intensity, where poetic images reveal an absorbing meditation on themes relating to sound and silence, history, memory and exile. A Harvest Films / Resound production.

Shot on and around the Fastnet Lighthouse, 8 miles of the southwest coast of Ireland, Fathom is a meditation on isolation and thinking. A Harvest Films production, funded by the Arts Council.

Each year on the last Sunday of July one of the oldest pilgrimages in Ireland takes place. Pilgrims come from the surrounding countryside to ascend the 2,510 feet of Croagh Patrick. It has been traditional for certain people to climb the mountain at night and this is where the film begins. A Harvest Films production, funded by the Arts Council.

A film in three parts, shot in three distinctly different places, geographically, symbolically and historically. The interplay and progression between the three sections forms a powerful study of mankind's relationship with the earth, from high aspirations, to its fall from grace. Images courtesy of Clare Langan ©2013.

by Clare Langan for Sigur Rós

A filmic essay which unfolds as a series of conversations on Ireland, exploring themes such as emigration, mythology, consumerism, socialism, the place of the church in Irish life, the central role of land in Irish history and the sense of a civic society.

A feature documentary exploring the world of an extraordinary artists' collective in Callan, Co. Kilkenny, which focuses on the artists' abilities instead of their special needs. Produced by Adrian McCarthy, Wildfire Films.

A documentary about Tara - the mythical seat of ancient Irish kingship - and the M3 motorway that was built through the site. The film explores aspects of historical power and the the power of myth in Irish history. Produced by Soisiú Films.

On December 22, 1997, in the southernmost Mexican province of Chiapas, 45 indigenous residents of Acteal, who had taken refuge in the village church, were massacred by paramilitary troops. Most of those killed were children and women. This film tells the full story of the massacre - and the complex political context that led to it - for the first time letting the people who survived tell their own story. A Lansdowne Films production.

A creative documentary that explores the mystery of art and mental illness. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1946 Angus MacPhee was taken from his island home on South Uist to a psychiatric hospital Inverness. For fifty years he spoke not a single word to any member of the hospital staff. His presence was also an absence; his secret grass weaving his only form of expression. A Lansdowne Films production.