St Mary’s Professor Meets Filmmaker Denis Buckley

Prof Lance Pettitt at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham was in conversation with artist and filmmaker Denis Buckley last week at the Rich Mix Arts Centre in Shoreditch, following a twin screening of two films that featured the topic of Irish emigration to Britain. The films, Phillip Donnellan’s The Irishmen: An Impression of Exile (1965, 45 mins b/w) and Denis Buckley’s own Nostos: The End of Exile (2013, 8 mins col), were separated by nearly 50 years of history but joined by similar themes of loss and displacement. In some cases they focus on profound loneliness and illness, in others a bond of camaraderie and a sense of liberation. Prof Pettitt drew on his own research work in Irish cinema over the past decade, which has focused on the relationship between Irish migration, film and screen remediation in the work of writers and directors as diverse in background as Donnellan, Thaddeus O’Sullivan, John T Davis and William Trevor. An appreciative audience engaged in a 30 minute discussion following the conversation between the filmmaker and the critic, which explored the connections between the two films and how the older film still resonated with the experiences of both an older generation and the more recent wave of migrants to London.