Drogheda Independent – Wednesday 5th August 2009
DOCUMENTARY TO BE SCREENED
Borders back to school for Aerga Show
A Bellewstown based TV company, Aerga Productions, has just completed a half hour documentary for Irish language station TG4 which will be screened this September.
Aerga was set up last year by former RTE reporter, Orlaith Carmody, who won the commission to make the documentary in a highly competitive commissioning round.
Orlaith lives in Bellewstown with her husband, Gavin Duffy, of the Dragons’ Den, and their four children.
The documentary is called Clann Lughaidh, and it tells the story of three women, still the best of friends, who met on the train to the Louis School in Monaghan in the 1940s, on their way to becoming ‘lady boarders’.
In a walk down memory lane, the women revisit the school that left such an impression on them, their long forgotten world of May processions and nuns in full habits brought to life with fabulous archive footage of the school found in the National Film Archive.
‘I heard about the Louis footage in the National Film Archive when I was taking a masters in film and television at DCU a couple of years ago, and when I went to view it and found my mother and a couple of her friends on the footage, I just knew it had to be made’, said Orlaith, the producer/director of the film.
‘I had been raised on my mother’s stories of boarding school, and the mischief she and her friends got up to, and it was really funny to see the three of them, nearly 80 years old, giggling and carrying on as if they were still 13, going around the school remembering the fun they had.
‘I never enjoyed working on a project so much!’.
The three women, BridínUí Mhaolagáin (nee Dobbyn), Bláthnaid O Brádaigh (nee Dobbyn) and Bláthnaid Carmody (nee Nicholson) attended the Louis school during WW2, or the Emergency as it was often called, and relied heavily on parcels from home to keep the hunger pangs away.
The filming of Clann Lughaidh was made possible with the support of the current management of the school, and will be broadcast in September on TG4 as part of the Sunday evening ‘Cogar’ series. |
