Carlow film-maker’s work travels from the Blackstairs to Roswell
Nuala Dalton's film, Legends of the Mountain, explores folklore from the Blackstairs Mountains
A CARLOW film maker who has released a movie based on the folklore around the Blackstairs mountains has just had her film screened at a prestigious film festival in New Mexico.
Legends of the Mountain is a short film on County Carlow history and folklore by Nuala Dalton which was screened at The Roswell Daily Record Film Festival in New Mexico, USA, this week.
The Roswell Daily Record is known for being the newspaper that told the news of an alleged UFO crash outside the city in 1947. This year, the festival screened twenty seven films, on themes of the paranormal, including Nuala’s.
Written, directed and produced by Nuala, this is her third short film on the region.
“In ‘Legends of the Mountain’ I explore folk tales from the Blackstairs Mountains. Tales of outlaws and supernatural beings were kept alive for centuries through our local folklore and I wanted to bring them back to life,” explained Nuala.
“These type of folktales can seem simple on the surface, but the tales have many layers. They connected people to ancestral experience and often, to what was for them a sacred “other world”. In my film excerpts of these old tales are reenacted, and the historical context through which the tales emerged is revealed in interviews with three historians.”
The 15 minute short film features the historians Kevin Whelan of Dublin Global Gateway, University of Notre Dame; Dr Coleman A Dennehy and John Stocks Powell. The stories were acted by Tina Kavanagh, Michael Nolan, Bríd Waters, Jim Quirke and Sean Ryan.
It had its premier last year at Carlow Arts Festival.
The film went on to win Best Short Documentary at West Side Documentary Festival in Epirus Greece, and has screened at a variety of other festivals including San Francisco Irish Film Festival, Manchester International Film Festival, Cut International Film Festival New Jersey, and the Goa Short Film Festival at Sanskruti Bhavan, Goa.
The film was supported by Creative Ireland Carlow.
Nuala’s previous film ‘Higher Ground’ featured hill farmers, the late Tommy Ryan,Tomduff, Borris, and Martin Shannon, Knockroe. Nuala is originally from south Co Carlow and she has dedicated Legends of the mountain to her grandmother Rosanna Coleman from Coonogue, the Blackstairs.
To see Naula’s film, go to to: www.roswellufomuseum.com/upcoming-events
