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Director
Joe Comerford
Credits
Producer: Margaret Williams Editor: Joe Comerford
Principal Cast
Judy Donovan, Davy Spillane, lan Devlin
Category
FeatureExperimental
Following an arranged marriage, Irish Travellers Michael and Angela are sent to smuggle electrical goods across the Northern Irish Border. The faltering relationship of the couple is complicated along the way by their encounter with a diffident IRA man, Clicky. It’s a journey that culminates in the murder of a patriarch with Angela finding a liberation of sorts.
An anti-romantic Irish road movie, Traveller radically sidesteps the genre, following the script to find the story, deflating narrative expectations. Comerford used non-professional actors from the Traveller community, adjusting the script to changes in the personal lives of the participants and filming in authentic wintry locations. It was, as the director states, “a mixture of the planned and the spontaneous”.
The filmmmaker’s ongoing concerns about the failure of Ireland’s historical struggles are neatly woven into the dense textures of Traveller. It’s his most poetic, yet demanding, work.
Notes by Eugene Finn
80 minutes, Ireland/Great Britain , 1982, Colour
AKIRA (4K RESTORATION) 15.25, 20.30
AMÉLIE (25th ANNIVERSARY) 18.00
FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER 15.50
REBUILDING 13.00 (OC), 20.45
THE BLUE TRAIL 18.20
THE DRAMA 13.00, 18.10
THE STRANGER 13.10
THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN 15.15, 20.15
The IFI is supported by The Arts Council