Tushpi People outside Ireland may not be familiar with the 'Travellers'. It is said these are the descendants of the families forced from their lands in Ulster by The English Crown in the 16oos. With no Lands of their own they wandered around Ireland mainly as itinerant farm workers with a notable talent and affinity with horses. Today they travel infrequently with many transitioned into houses.Clannish, travellers have developed their own culture and language and traditionally exist on the fringes of Irish society. Often discriminated against and abused life can be very hard though some have risen to prosperity and prominence.Winnie is a 10 year old traveller girl living with her mother and some of her 9 siblings in a caravan in the docks with no running water and a generator for electricity . There is no real story arc. Instead the camera seems to record Winnie's life over a couple of weeks. As such it packs a punch as you follow her to school, to get water,overhear her Mothers struggle in her dealings with the Council as she tries to effect a better life for her children. Insightful, Interesting and engaging but some subtitles would be helpful given the strong accent.

GiselleCorrelli I love this film, because its so different. Why are people afraid of that? Its a fly on the wall snippet of a family's life. It never claimed to be anything else. I do wonder what the kids are doing now, are they married? Still in Ringsend? Put most other kids in front of a camera and they wont be like Winnie, realise it or not she would make a good actress. I didn't know how much was scripted/acted and what was genuine, but it doesn't matter. I heard this film won an award and the family were taken to view it in Italy, I imagine they were pretty much abandoned after that. Well I could watch it over and over again, we don't have to agree with their life/choices but its good to see how other people live!

Martin Bradley Perry Ogden's superb "Pavee Lackeen" looks and feels like a film from Eastern Europe but it is, in fact, Irish although set in an Ireland few of us who live here would recognize. The title means 'the traveller girl' and the film, which is virtually plot less, is set amongst the travelling community, those people who were once simply called gypsies. The cast are non-professionals and, for the most part, they are playing themselves. Indeed the film is much closer to a documentary, albeit a staged one, than it is to fiction.The central character is Winnie and she is 'played' by Winnie Maughan. Of course, she isn't acting any more than anyone else is acting or you might say other members of the cast are acting out their parts and acting them very badly. Winnie, however, is different in that she has a 'real' personality that has nothing to do with her being an actress; (let's just hope she has a life and let's hope no-one ever tries to talk her into any kind of 'acting' career).What plot there is concerns the eviction of Winnie's mother Rose from her caravan - and that's it. There are no big dramatic moments or revelations. Ogden's camera simply observes these people as they live through the drudgery of their daily lives, lives lived very much on the margins of society. Apart from the travellers themselves we see very few native Irish people. Ogden emphasizes that Ireland is now a multi-cultural society populated by people from around the globe. Winnie finds affinity with these people in that she, too, is an outsider, a stranger in her own land. Obviously very intelligent, her future will depend on her breaking away from her family. (She has a brother in gaol but he talks to her of going 'straight' when he gets out and getting his own flat). Whether she does or not is a different matter. The last shot in the film is of Winnie fetching water from a tap some distance from the caravan she calls home so that she can make her mother a cup of tea. It is an image both bleak and haunting and is perfectly in keeping with Ogden's vision of an Ireland far removed from the Celtic tiger.

Arne Reisegg Myklestad Through highly composed scenes of everyday objects, selected, arranged and lighted to express something beyond their mundane physical reality, photographer Perry Ogden pursuit his desire to raise awareness in an objective way. But what happens when a messy room is rearranged through strict scenography to look even messier? What happens to reality when it is enforced through manipulation? Is it beyond realism or just fictional realism? And does this really lead to an objective presentation of a photographers subject rather than just the photographer's subjective composition on objects? Like in a Jeff Wall image, the perfect detailing and significance of everything leaves the observer skeptic of the authenticity of the portrayed reality. Whit an intention to create such suspension, playing on the observer's expectations and presuppositions, this simulated realism can be a powerful tool. As for Pavee Lackeen, I personally feel it lacks a proper stand to have an appeal within the genre of Cinéma vérité while to much control lies within the reach of the director to attain any atmosphere of documentary realism. To turn an old phrase, maybe a thousand words are worth less than an image?