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Making an Enniscorthy movie
Well known and proven Enniscorthy film director Dick Donaghue recently approached me with an idea for a short film for Enniscorthy, asking if he could work with the Enniscorthy Historical Re-enactment Society members as extras for a fictional short film on the War of Independence.
I suggested to him that he read my second book The Shadow of Freedom, which documents exact details of the War of Independence in Enniscorthy, as and where they happened, woven into a fictional story of the McDonald family of No.8 Court Street.
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Dick liked the book and the idea of making a movie around real events, and immediately set to producing a film script based on the novel.
Currently, we are filming scenes around the town, at the Courthouse, the Manse, Court Street, the Cathedral, and other iconic locations, so if you see British soldiers in the Tan Yard Lane, or Rebels being marched up Court Street into the Courthouse, do not be alarmed, we are not being invaded again, it is all part of The Shadow of Freedom film.
I am hugely excited about the project, not just about seeing extracts from my book being turned into a short movie, but about seeing incidents in the Enniscorthy War of Independence remembered and recorded in the exact locations where they occurred one hundred years ago.
To see my book and my town on the big screen makes me very proud indeed, and I am very grateful to director Dick Donaghue, asst. director Jer Ennis, local historian Barry Lacey, who ensures that all the facts in the film are historically correct, actors and members of Enniscorthy Historical Re-enactment Society who are proving themselves to be naturals in front of the camera.
We hope to be ready to show The Shadow of Freedom before the end of the Decade of Commemorations – May 2023, so expect a viewing in April or May at the Presentation Arts Centre.
I am thrilled about this innovative ven- ture, which places the amazing history of our town in the public arena for all to see, and I hope that the people of Enniscorthy will be pleased with the end result.
