What Am I Doing Here?
This offbeat documentary follows actor, writer and political activist Donal O’Kelly as he takes to the road with his new play Vive La. Initial enthusiasm wanes as the show receives lacklustre reviews, and, with no budget for publicity, audiences are poor. As he heads home, somewhat bruised, he turns to camera to reflect with humour on his life’s journey and to mull over the purpose of art in society before bouncing back some months later with his dreams reignited and a European tour on the horizon. This intimate portrait is infused with the warmth of the relationship between the observer and the observed.
Trish McAdam
Director
Also Directed by Trish McAdam
A timespace map, across 500 years of north inner city Dublin, from Henrietta Street to Grangegorman, using motion graphics, live footage and charcoal drawings of faces of patients from rare pre-1900 photographs from The National Archives, explores changes in social control, mental asylums and rehabilitation. Narrated by the imagined voice of a dead artist friend, Tony Rudenko, and voiced by Aidan Gillen.
An impressionistic essay film on Berlin during the transition to unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall, combining animation of Mick Cullen paintings, live action and music of Raymond Deane, with sound by Jane Gogan.
This visualisation of a statement by Chinese writer and human rights activist Liu Xiaobo was made to raise awareness of his plight and that of his wife, Liu Xia.
A visualisation of a poem written for Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Chinese artist Liu Xia.
McAdam’s debut, a comical short, about Jack (Jack Lynch, who co-wrote the film) and the catastrophic effects of a night’s drinking. This marked McAdam’s first film collaboration with actors Donal O’Kelly and Pom Boyd.
A wry story of female friendship: Jean and Kate, two "nearing-thirty" street performers, find the ups and downs of life and love amid the pubs and music scene of modern day Dublin.
In Hoodwinked, McAdam reclaimed Irish women from generations of obscurity. She reveals the significant role of women in Ireland’s battle for independence, the Mother and Child Scheme, feminism and the sexual revolution, Northern Ireland and Civil Rights, reproductive rights, and the invasion of the Forty Foot.
Leo O’Kelly, aged 50, is about to make his first solo album in over 25 years. Since his debut, aged 14 in a Carlow showband, he has been widely admired as a brilliant guitarist and song writer and a man of an ever-changing, timeless, eclectic style. The film follows the recording of the new album Glare in Temple Bar’s Sun Studio, documenting the inevitable tensions that arise among creatives and capturing the moments of genuine elation when shared visions are realised. The focus is Leo himself, an intelligently volatile character, who blossoms in the presence of McAdam and her crew.
This formally playful, animated memoir reveals McAdam, in dialogue with herself, played by a young actor as she reimagines a story from the 1980s about a trip to America, the naievete of youth, and a narrow escape.
