Feature Documentary
Editing documentaries is a huge privilege: you’re entrusted with someone’s life, their experiences, their memories, and you get to tell their story to an audience. It’s also a huge responsibility: you have to keep to the front of your mind that these are real people, and you have a duty be honest and to care for them, to mind them when they’re most vulnerable. Below are just a few of the feature documentaries I’ve been lucky enough to edit.
Bad: the song that saved my life
This documentary explores the remarkable life of Andy 'Guck' Rowen, the Dublin man whose struggles with trauma and heroin addiction inspired three U2 songs, including the classic anthem Bad.
Fatboy Slim: Right Here Right Now
In the summer of 2002 Fatboy Slim held a free rave on Brighton Beach. The organisers expected 60,000 people; 250,000 turned up.
This is the story of that day, of how it came to be that a quarter of a million people made the journey to see Fatboy Slim perform live.
Described by the Guardian in their Four Star review as “…a surprisingly intense experience, a rush powered by the euphoria of irresponsible adventure and the sweet sadness of distant youth”
One night in Millstreet
One Night In Millstreet is the story of Ireland in 1995, a snapshot of a country told through a high stakes prize fight in Millstreet, Cork between the then unknown underdog Steve ‘The Celtic Warrior’ Collins and the larger-than-life champion Chris ‘Simply The Best’ Eubank – an against-all-odds sporting event that had an entire nation gripped and on the edge of its seat.
Welcome to the Dark Ages
How to make a documentary about a pop group without discussing that pop group? That was the challenge in Welcome to the Dark Ages. In 2017 Bill Drummond & Jimmy Cauty, formerly The KLF, returned after 23 years of silence - but they were no longer in the music business. They were now undertakers, planning to build a monument, the People's Pyramid, out of 34,952 bricks made from the remains of dead people. This film documents that plan, and in the process gives a greater insight into one of music’s most intriguing bands.
Keepers of the Flame
Ostensibly a film about the newly opened Irish Military Pension Archives, this documentary explores the notions of memory and commemoration in relation to the Irish revolutionary period. The archive documents are complemented by previously unseen film and photos from private collections; together they offer a view into a bloody period in Irish history that still resonates through society today.
Natan
The remarkable story of Bernard Natan, a Romanian immigrant who came to Paris in 1905 and became involved almost immediately with French cinema. In the late 1920s he took control of the Pathé film group, and under his leadership Pathé went on to produce epic films such as Les Miserables. But Bernard Natan has become largely written out of French film history; convicted of fraud in the 1930s he was stripped of his citizenship, imprisoned and ultimately sent to his death Auschwitz. Even in death he was persecuted; his name became synonymous with pornography, and his reputation destroyed by these untrue stories.
Made under the Arts Council’s Reelart scheme, Natan premiered in the Dublin International Film Festival, and has subsequently played at film festivals around the world, including the Telluride Film Festival.
The Gentleman Prizefighter
At the turn of the twentieth century James J Corbett could reasonably claim to be the most famous man in the world. Through his career as a prizefighter and later as a star of the silver screen he became a household name, and his immortality was sealed when Errol Flynn portrayed him the the Hollywood biopic Gentleman Jim in 1942. This documentary charts his career, from his humble beginnings as a bank clerk, his career in the ring and on the screen, his stint as poster boy for the original Ponzi scheme, his ultimate demise and his legacy.