“John McGahern A Private World is an astonishing documentary…an illumination. The countryside, the characters, the runes of the land and its people have metamorphised from the page to the television screen.”
Harry McGee,
The Irish Examiner
On March 30th 2006, after a life-time of dedication to his art, John McGahern, one of Ireland’s most distinguished writers, sadly passed away after a long illness. Since the publication of his first book in 1963, John McGahern was at the cultural heart of Irish life. He was in the happy position of being universally praised by the critics and equally loved by the reading public. John McGahern: A Private World was filmed in 2004 just prior to the publication of his memoirs and these memoirs form the backbone of the documentary. Through intimate interviews, a strong and compelling sense of the man emerges, offering a rare insight into the creative process.
‘Where is our gallant man’: The films of Pat Collins McGahern’s deliberate manner of speaking, only raising his voice in relaying the words of an embittered Irish emigrant in London, work in tandem with Collins’ tendency to ruminate upon landscape and allows the film to attain the stately atmosphere of McGahern’s fiction, serving just as well as an adaptation of McGahern’s works as it as does as a documentary on the man who wrote them.
The films of Pat Collins,
Chris Beausang
Credits
Director: Pat Collins
Producer: Philip King
Producer: Tina O’Reilly
Editor: Isobel Stephenson
Camera: Donal Gilligan
Sound: Eamon Little
Previous Screenings and Awards
IDFA
Best Documentary, Irish Film and Television Awards 2005
Best Documentary, Celtic Film and Television Awards, 2005
