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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
ARCHIVE AT LUNCHTIME: SHALL WE DANCE? 13.00
CARMEN 14.10
CHEVALIER 13.10, 18.30, 20.50
CONTEMPT | LE MÉPRIS 16.40
PAUL NEWMAN: THE HUSTLER 15.45
REALITY 18.50, 20.30
THELMA & LOUISE 15.30
WAR PONY 13.20 (OC), 18.10, 20.40
The IFI is supported by The Arts Council