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Director
Joe Comerford
Credits
Electronic Music: Roger Doyle Script and Direction: Joe Comerford
Principal Cast
Danny O'Connor, Carolyn Tipping
Category
ShortExperimental
Joe Comerford’s first film involves a process that informs all of his other work. The combination of “elements of narrative with abstraction”.
A pitch-black Beckett-like vaudeville of impotence and aggression, Emtigon tragicomically details a homeless old man’s covert intrusion on a young woman social worker.
Claustrophobic framing and cutting refuses the viewer an easy interpretation or even a comfortable point of view but the abstractions hint and nudge at possible meanings. An associational montage of images from World War I suggests a collective memory that might somehow underlie the protagonist’s behavior.
The final image of a stolen house-key dropped into dark canal waters is emblematic of this filmmaker’s opaque, poetic narratives.
Notes by Eugene Finn
10mins, Ireland, 1971
AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS: CLERKS 18.20
ARCHIVE AT LUNCHTIME: BRITISH & IRISH (PROGRAMME 1) 12.50 12.50
CROSSING 13.00, 18.10
HEART OF AN OAK 13.10
LA CHIMERA 15.45
SHAYDA 15.30, 20.30
SLEEP 13.40
THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN 20.50
THE COMMANDANT’S SHADOW 18.30
THE CONVERSATION 50TH ANNIVERSARY 4K RESTORATION 20.40
The IFI is supported by The Arts Council