documentary

RTE presents landmark documentary on Irish acting legend Stephen Rea

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Stephen Rea

RTE will present a documentary about Irish acting legend and IFTA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Stephen Rea titled Stephen Rea: The Fire in Me Now. The documentary follows Rea as he rehearses Beckett’s renowned play Krapp’s Last Tape in Dublin playing opposite his younger self with audio tapes he recorded over a decade ago.

Oscar-nominated actor Stephen Rea was honoured with the Irish Academy Award for his Lifetime Achievement, and for his outstanding contribution to the Irish and international screen industry at the 21st Anniversary IFTA Awards Ceremony. Rea has been the winner of 3 IFTA Awards, with 9 overall nominations. This intimate documentary explores the development of his outlook through the actor’s life and work.

Stephen Rea: The Fire in Me Now follows Rea from where he grew up in north Belfast, to his family home north of Dublin, to London’s Maida Vale where he spent time as an actor and to his much loved Donegal.

The documentary film depicts intimate conversations with friends and collaborators of Rea’s, including actor Sinéad Cusack, director Neil Jordan and Civil Rights activist Eamon McCann.

Speaking about the documentary, Stephen Rea said: “I was initially reluctant to do the documentary in lots of ways because I am a deeply private person, and I’ve always believed that the work has to be bigger than your ego. But I did want to pay homage to the friendship and generosity of the collaborators I was lucky to find, like Nancy Meckler and Neil Jordan, who helped me personally and in my career. I am a proud North Belfast man, and I hope the film shows younger people in the business that no matter where you’re from, there’s not one set path to being an actor. It’s about being true to yourself.

Stephen ReaThe documentary showcases archive extracts from Stephen Rea’s most prolific performances over the course of more than fifty years which spans from his rarely seen student sketches at Queen’s University Belfast in the 1960s, to his collaborations in recent years with Vicky Featherstone, former Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre, London. Stephen Rea: The Fire in Me Now highlights his commanding presence on stage and screen.

The title The Fire in Me Now is a homage to the final lines of Krapp’s Last Tape, the documentary demonstrates that Stephen Rea’s enduring passion and commitment to theatre has remained steadfast as enters his seventh decade as a professional actor.

Stephen Rea: The Fire in Me Now airs on  RTÉ One and RTÉ Player Thursday April 10, 10:15pm

Source: RTE presents landmark documentary on Irish acting legend Stephen Rea | The Irish Film & Television Network

Nanci Griffith: From a Distance review – harrowing account of the country music star’s life that ended in isolation and alcoholism

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Nanci Griffith

By Ed Power

In 1987 Nanci Griffith became a country-rock superstar in Ireland even as she struggled with obscurity back home in the United States. Something in the Texas musician’s storytelling style and the starry-eyed sadness of her lyrics connected at a deeply emotional level to audiences on the other side of the Atlantic. She sounded poetically miserable, and, emerging from the awful 1980s, we were poetically miserable, too.

That sadness was more than just an artistic device, as becomes clear in RTÉ pop presenter turned producer David Heffernan’s Nanci Griffith – From a Distance (RTÉ One, Sunday, 8pm), an engaging, if harrowing, account of her success in Ireland, the many friendships she made and her retreat into isolation and alcoholism in the years before her death in 2021 at age 68.

It’s a tragic story, and while her music will be familiar to anyone who remembers Ireland in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the film struggles to give us a sense of what Griffith was like. But perhaps that’s because she herself was never quite sure who she was: one contributor explains that, like many creative types, Griffith was insecure – a lack of confidence that intensified with age. “She would pour it out in some of her songs,” says her manager, Ken Levitan. “You see in a lot of artists. She was very insecure. The insecurity grew as she got older.”

Still, if she lacked self-belief, she had plenty of fans. Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett and Rodney Crowell are among those who express their admiration. They recall a gifted songwriter and lyricist and talk – seemingly in earnest – of how they envied her success in Ireland.

“Everywhere you went, everyone mentioned Nanci,” recollects Crowell of a visit to Ireland. “I was probably a little jealous. We’ve been slogging away. She hits the big time. But good for her.”
Emmylou Harris agrees Griffith became an Irish success story, even with her American roots. “You almost thought she was Irish,” she says. “Sometimes you forgot she was from Texas, even with that deep accent.”

Yet that success papered over profound unhappiness – a remoteness from even close friends that spiralled with age. “I didn’t know her loneliness,” says Emmylou Harris. Crowell says that even if he had reached out, he isn’t sure how much help he could have offered. Some people don’t want to be saved.
The paradox is that she has made friends easily. She was close to Heffernan, a host of Anything Goes in the 1980s, and godmother to his son, Aaron. Heffernan recalls visiting her in Nashville and being collected from the airport in a limousine.

But Griffith grew distant from even her closest acquaintances in her final years. Twice married, she struggled to connect with people at an emotional level, says a friend.
“She wasn’t capable of forming real intimate relationships,” they say. “She couldn’t let go of herself. She drove [the men in her life] away because of that. She knew it, I’m afraid. It was a source of un happiness for her.”

She died alone in 2021. If beloved by her fans, there was a perception she had been forgotten by Nashville – though with a 1994 Grammy to her name (for best contemporary folk LP), she could hardly be described as unappreciated.

Her final years were tragic, yet there are many heartwarming aspects to the story of a singer with low self-esteem and a poetic air who found success in Ireland, where people were struggling with the same sort of emotional damage. This heartfelt documentary is a worthy homage to an artist Ireland took to its heart in troubled times – but whose own troubles were ultimately too great for even the love of an entire country to heal.

Source: Irish Times