Issue 2: Autumn 2008: Spanish Avant-Garde Film
Peidhleacan Solais (Butterfly Light)
Review Posted: 08 Oct 08
Imagine yourself back in primary school. No need to remember- just imagine. And now imagine this: the school routine pleasantly disrupted by the appearance of a man with a projector who screens films by Lotte Reiniger and Brakhage. Then he proposes a remake of Brakhage's Mothlight (1963), hands around strips of 35mm film and you and your classmates set to work. Remember- yes, this time let's remember- Mothlight? As Brakhage described it: "Essence of lepidoptera re-created between two strips of clear mylar tape: an anima animation. What a moth might see from birth to death if black were white and white were black." Moths and flowers arranged on the surface of clear film and projected.
Transparent 35mm film and gathered plants and butterfly wings. There's no contemporary frame of reference in this educational undertaking; no working back from current media- the materiality of film is definitively highlighted. The miracle of cinema at its most technically basic and poetically eloquent enters very young lives unchallenged and renewed.
Now let's suppose all this actually happened, that it happened this year in a number of schools around the Muskerry Gaeltacht in Co. Cork. The man with the film, projector and inspired idea was Dónal Ó'Céilleachair, filmmaker, founder of New York's legendary Ocularis screening venue, and West Cork native. He accomplished this project as part of the Súil Lán Film Residency at the Ionad Cultúrtha in Ballyvourney. The resulting film, Peidhleacán Solais (Butterfly Light), along with an enchanting documentary about its making, was subsequently screened there. This event was accompanied by an exhibition of the film strips which the 150 children participating had worked on, each decorating twenty-four frames. To what extent this project will exist in their memories no one can tell, but seeing the splendid result of their efforts projected is enough to incite one to imagine the best.
-Maximilian Le Cain