Clare debut in The Pipe-line

AS director of the award-winning film The Pipe, which chronicles the controversy surrounding the Corrib gas pipeline and the community affected by it, Richie O’Donnell is a man who doesn’t shy away from his social conscious. If only his sporting allegiance was as strong.

The Tipperary man, whose grandparents are from Clare, said he “sold out his county for a pair of spikes”, running cross country for Tulla in the past.
He laughed, “I was at a cross country run and I was doing it in my bare feet when this fella, Tom Byrnes, came up to me and offered me a pair of spikes, before I knew it he had me signed up for Tulla.”
Richie will be in Clare this week for the county’s debut screening of The Pipe. The film, which has already wowed film festivals all over the world, will be shown in Glór this Thursday.
He said he is looking forward to screening the film in the county, and in particular to the questions and answers session afterwards.
“We’ve had an incredible response to the film, particularly at the Q and As afterwards. Here, we have a story of a small little community where large, private interests were left to run roughshod over the interests of the little people. That is really striking a chord with people and plugging into the current mood.
“You could transfer that story to the banks, politics, the building industry, you name it. People get really passionate at the Q and As. It very quickly goes away from talking about the filmmaking to a big political argument, the anger in people is incredible,” he said.
Four years in the making, The Pipe tells the story of the small community of Rossport through the personal experiences of three main characters at the height of local tensions.
The film has received rave reviews in Variety and Time Out among others, been featured on Prime Time, nominated for an IFTA and has won awards at film festivals. While the film has taken the world by storm, Richie said he didn’t even set out to make a documentary when the cameraman started filming in Rossport.
“My mother is from Mayo and I would have spent all my summers there as a child. Back then I never remember seeing a garda car there, there was never any need. A year after the Rossport five were released I was living there and to be honest I didn’t really have a huge interest in what was going on, I had other things going. I used to do some filming there and then some of the footage would be used on the news.
“Then in 2006, 200 gardaí were sent into the area and blocked off the roads to the refinery site. They proceeded to remove the people who had assembled at the gate, these were housewives, farmers, fishermen, teachers. Something struck me that there was something very wrong here, that a once peaceful community, which had at one time the second lowest crime rate in the country could turn into this,” he recalled.
The more he filmed, the more Richie became drawn into the story and the lives of the people affected. “What really got to me was I was filming scenes for the news and found that the media failed to portray the story honestly, they sensationalised it and spun it. The local people’s issues of health and safety were warped. Sure, there were people who came from the outside, eco-warriors and people with Republican connections, who would come along maybe one day in the month and walk with the locals. The locals were very welcoming people and didn’t question who they were. Then journalists were writing that they were terrorists, which was complete rubbish. The perception became twisted, that was what I saw as somebody living locally who was working in the media. After a few months, I just couldn’t walk away from it.”
Richie says he would have liked Shell to have been involved in the documentary. “They always tried to put in conditions and I couldn’t allow that. My dealings with them had to be as frank as my dealings with the locals, because not all the locals come out in a good light either, their weaknesses are very much shown. It ended up that really there was only one side I could tell, I don’t try and tell Shell’s story and make it up for them. I’m very honest when I saw this is the perspective of these certain people who are in the path of the pipeline and who tried to get it changed.”
The film, which was made with support from the Irish Film Board and TG4, premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh where it scooped the best documentary award.
“That was incredible, many local people came down from Mayo to watch it and there was such a huge emotional reaction. It was like being hit by a train, 10 years of their lives squashed into minutes. All the emotions and memories came back and it really got to them. Even though a lot of it was hard to watch, and some of it was not complimentary but they were very appreciative that somebody would allow their story to be told honestly.”
The Pipe then went on to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival, where they faced the challenge of whether people from outside of Ireland would ‘get’ the film.
“That was our one big worry. We didn’t know if people would get the humour, the subtlety, understand the accents. But people really got it over there, there was no cultural divide. Then we went to London, Amsterdam, Palm Springs, the film is just growing and growing. It was like a springboard, we were getting so much attention abroad that it opened up doors for us at home and the film started being screened here in December.
“The response here has been incredible, any Irish film is always going to be a hard one to push but especially when it’s a documentary. It’s just been pure hard work and grind but word of mouth has been spreading and being on Prime Time really got the profile out there,” he said.
“I’m really looking forward to showing the film here, I know a lot of people in Clare and Glór is a great venue. Hopefully we’ll be able to bring the film to other smaller venues in the future around the county, we’ll bring it to any place we can.”