Reel Ireland is screening a selection of Irish films abroad, but how does Ireland's silver- screen image live up to reality? Rosita Bolandgoes to the cinema with eight Polish people.
If you had to define a country through contemporary film, what would it say about that country to audiences who had not been there? That is, more or less, what Reel Ireland has been doing abroad for the last three years. It has a package of Irish films and shorts which it has been showing in different permutations in many countries, including Australia, Portugal, Israel, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, China and Argentina. This month, Reel Ireland will be touring five films to three Polish cities: the first travelling Irish film festival in Poland. The five films that will be shown are Studs, Breakfast on Pluto, Disco Pigs, Adam and Pauland The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
It's a May morning in the Irish Film Institute, a few weeks before the films will be shown in Gdynia, Warsaw and Kraków respectively. Eight members of Ireland's Polish community - which is 60,000 strong according to last year's census, but thought to number significantly more now - are sitting in a screening room, slightly dazed after watching two of these films back to back. One is Adam and Paul, a jet-black comedy about a day in the life of two friends who are homeless drug addicts wandering round modern Dublin. The other is The Wind that Shakes the Barley, about brother fighting against brother in 1920s pre- and post-Treaty Ireland.
Three of the Poles present, Helena Johnston, Ursula Retzlaff-O'Carroll and Hanna Dowling, have been in Ireland for a combined total of 86 years: they all married Irish men and settled here. The other five, Emilia Marchelewska, Lukasz Rumatowski, Anna Kozik, Natalia Solarska and Diana Mendakiewicz, have been here for periods of between two years and two weeks. So what, if anything, makes these two films, Adam and Pauland The Wind that Shakes the Barley, "Irish" to them? What impression of Ireland do these films give, both to those Poles who have been here for decades and those recently arrived? And how do they think the Irish pair will be received by their compatriots who have not been to Ireland?
"I do not think Polish people will like Adam and Paul at all," Dowling, who works as an interpreter and has been here for 27 years, says flatly. "It has nothing to do with the real Dublin. It is very bleak. And nothing happens in it." She makes a face as she speaks, to emphasise her dislike.
Mendakiewicz (23), who spent some time in Ireland a couple of years ago and has been here for a fortnight as an intern at the Polish Embassy, does not agree. "We can't expect Ireland to be like a second America for us. It's not like we're in heaven when we Polish people get to Ireland. There are social problems here too - drug addiction, homelessness."
"This is only a very small fragment of what Ireland is," says Retzlaff-O'Carroll, an artist living here for 27 years. "But it will be an eye-opener for the Polish people watching in Poland. It will be an insight for them into how Irish people deal with social problems, and that they don't treat outsiders well. Maybe some people in Poland will say that this is a film whose lesson is: do not come to Ireland."
"What I thought was very Irish about Adam and Paulis the behaviour of the two men. How nice and polite they both were, always saying they were sorry," offers project manager Rumatowski (41), who has been here a year.
Nice and polite? What about all the language? There had been a ninth person watching the films, but he walked out soon after Adam and Paulstarted, offended by the repeated use of "f**k" in the dialogue. There is some discussion about this, and the consensus is that the language was automatic, and thus superficial, and had little to do with the core of the characters. " Adam and Paulare very Irish," explains Johnston, who is chairperson of the Irish-Polish Society and has been here 32 years. "They are on the margins of society but have a deep-rooted kindness, and Irish people are like that. They were naive but intelligent. Inside them was still the community they came from, even though they didn't really belong there any more."
THERE IS A SCENE in Adam and Paulwhere the two lads end up sharing (reluctantly) a park bench with an Eastern European man. There is a fairly predictable exchange when the lads tell him to go back to Romania where he came from. He is not from Romania, he informs them. He's from Bulgaria. It's clear that neither of the lads knows where either country is. The Poles all laugh a little bleakly as they watch.
"To me, that scene in that film is just like a modern version of the Irish wanting the English out in The Wind that Shakes the Barley: the boys want the Bulgarian out. He's the outsider to them," says Solarska (26), who is studying ethnic relationships and has just come to Ireland.
What about the way men and women are portrayed in the two films? Could they be Polish? Or are they different and in what way?
"Irish women are definitely more different. They are more extrovert," says Rumatowski. "The Irishmen are very similar. They are also rude, like Polish men." There is some disagreement about this, but Rumatowski just smiles and shakes his head.
"What I think from those films about Irish men is that they are not very close to reality at all," says Solarska. "They are either fighting for an idea, a dream, like in The Wind that Shakes the Barley, or they don't engage with real life at all, like the characters of Adam and Paul. It's the women in both films who have much more of a true sense of reality."
Everyone agrees that The Wind that Shakes the Barleyis likely to go down well in Poland. "It shows the history, but not in a simplistic way," says Kozik. "Before I came here, I didn't realise why people had been so against the English or why Irish people abroad don't want to be mistaken for English people. It explains the hostility, and gives me an extra awareness."
"It's a very important film. It shows the important part of what it is to be Irish, and explains the conflict between Ireland and England," says Marchelewska. "I think it shows that Irish people feel a responsibility for themselves and they are not afraid to stand up for what they believe in. Polish people don't have faith in themselves," . There is disagreement from some of the others, but she says firmly, "That's what I think."
Do they know that the film was directed by an Englishman, Ken Loach? They look amazed. No, neither Kozik nor Marchelewska knew this. They digest the information and say they can't believe it.
Everyone agrees that film can make powerful, memorable statements about places you've never been to, and that whether these are really "true" or not, their power lies in the inherent fact that they become memorable.
Before she came to Ireland 27 years ago, Dowling saw Ryan's Daughter. "I thought that Ireland was a misty place with beautiful views and a little bit tragic." This definition of an advance impression of Ireland is exactly the same as the one Marchelewska got a couple of years ago from watching a film set on Achill, whose name she can't recall, but which sounds like the 1998 film Love and Rage, an obsessive love story, set in the 19th century and starring Greta Scacchi and a yet-to-be famous Daniel Craig. Both women say they think these impressions of mist, rain, dramatic scenery and tragedy do in fact represent part of what they have since found Ireland to be.
"But what all these films are missing is the Irish sense of humour," Marchelewska says. Their jury is out on whether Adam and Paulconstitutes black humour or not. In the main, they think not. "Polish people don't have a sense of humour," Kozik announces. Whether her compatriots think this is true or not, the comment has the effect of making everyone laugh.
Reel Ireland will be showing Irish films in Poland in Kraków, tonight and tomorrow, Warsaw, Mon-Tue, and Gydnia, Wed and Thurs. www.reelireland.ie
