03/09/2005

An ultra realistic plunge into a Bohemian Irish world for the first film in competition during Critics’ Week: Pavee Lacken [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Perry Ogden. Mixing professional and non-professional actors, this first feature, shot entirely on mini-DV, flirts skilfully with the line between fiction and documentary, an intimate portrait of society’s problems. A remarkable cinematic debut in an unexpected register for Perry Ogden who has being exercising his talent for many years as a fashion photographer.

However, what could be further away from the bright lights of the fashion world than the life of this family of Travellers - or Pavee in their own language created over time-, these gypsies living in Ireland for centuries, marginalized and still living by the side of the road, in the heart of the towns. Among them, Winnie (Winnie Maughan), 11 years old, lives in a static mobile home with her mother and numerous brothers and sisters. Following, step by step, the life of this young adolescent, an intimate slice of her life, Perry Ogden’s camera captures the essential of these existences: episodic school life, threats of expulsion by the authorities, daily searches for water to wash with and for petrol to drive the electricity, followed by social workers and aid associations for Travellers... Subtly framed, this piece of cinéma-vérité, which hits its target with neither clichés nor voyeurism, develops very gently, sequence after sequence, around the portrait of the young Ammy who is very reminiscent of Rosetta by the Dardenne brothers. Visiting the reality of these Travellers, Perry Ogden has succeeded admirably in creating credible cinema characters.

Very difficult to get out of the ground financially, Pavee Lacken was produced by the director (who co-wrote the screenplay with John Rocha) and Martina Niland. Winner of best film at the Galway Festival, it will be released at the end of October on the Irish screens (distribution: Eclipse) and in the UK.

(Translated from French)