A meditation on Ireland

Scene from 'Living In A Coded Land'

Paul Whitington

The third annual Tread Softly Festival (www.treadsoftly.ie) celebrating the Yeats family's connection with Sligo gets under way next week, and will include a special screening of Pat Collins' documentary Living in a Coded Land (scene pictured).

Given only a brief cinema release a few months back, Collins' film is one of the most interesting documentaries I've seen, and uses archive interviews and moody landscapes to form an evocative meditation on Irish history and culture.

Moving easily between medieval battles and the present day, Collins' camera roves the northern midlands finding traces of our near and ancient history, and creates a compelling picture of who we are, and how we got here.

It will be screened on August 6 and 7 at The Model in Sligo, and will hopefully get a DVD release sometime soon.