
Tarrac na Farraige review: RTÉ documentary about fishing livelihoods is both stunning and heartbreaking
RTÉ
demonstrates in its rewarding new documentary Tarrac na Farraige (RTÉ One, Thursday, 7pm).
This beautifully made two-part series offers an engaging portrait of a way of life that may soon be gone forever – with ever greater consolidation in the industry, fewer and fewer 'skippers' have a boat of their own. It is also a love letter to the gorgeous Irish coastline, featuring lush overhead shots of Castletownbere in
Cork
, Baile na nGall in the
Waterford
Gaeltacht and Inis Mór off the
Galway
coast. You could watch it with the sound down.
The fishing captains profiled are a fascinating bunch – passionate about the sea to the point of obsession. Standing outside his bungalow on Inis Mór, Enda Dirrane talks about his need for connection to the sea. Even before he became a full-time fisherman at 16, it was a constant in his life. 'I wouldn't live anywhere else,' he says as the sun twinkles on the water. 'I definitely couldn't live in the middle of the country. I'm always thinking about fishing.'
Tarrac na Farraige is far beyond the traditional RTÉ realm of stodgy, Nationwide-style documentaries
Several of those featured have had more than their share of private loss. In Castletownbere, Larry Murphy recalls discovering his son Wayne died while they were returning to port. 'Buried him on his 26th birthday,' Murphy recalls. 'He died on our way back from
Norway
. Bought the boat in 2004; he died in 2004. He was married with one kid. It was a bad, bad blow.'
READ MORE
Tragedy has also befallen Co Waterford's Fionn Ó Corraoin. 'Not many members of my family were fishermen,' Ó Corraoin says. 'My uncle and my grandfather on my mother's side…The others were farmers. But I grew up two miles down the road [from the sea].'
Ó Corraoin says he was inspired by his sister, Caoilfhionn, to pioneer a sustainable model of fishing – shortly afterwards she received a terminal
cancer
diagnosis. Everything he has done since has been in her memory.
Ó Corraoin is determined 'to show you can make a living doing this'. He says this while guiding his boat into the deep blue waters off the coast. It is a stunning image that sits heartbreakingly alongside the challenges he has had to overcome – and which elevates Tarrac na Farraige far beyond the traditional RTÉ realm of stodgy, Nationwide-style documentaries bodged together on the cheap.
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Irish Times
5 hours ago
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[ Taylor Tomlinson at 3Arena review: more personal, more vulnerable but few surprises Opens in new window ] 'When immigrant black people come here and they make black Irish children, they're not expecting the assimilation that we experience. My parents and their peers came purely out of survival – 'at least you're going to have a fighting chance'. When people come from a survival mentality and you're trying to operate from a thriving mentality, they're terrified. Because even though they do want you to thrive, they don't know what that looks like. And so there is this push and pull between: 'I want you to be better and that's why I brought you here,' versus, 'What better looks like is really confusing and alienating for me as the mother or father or family that brought you here.'' This can cause, Olusanya believes, a 'disconnect' between some black youth in Ireland, and their parents and older relatives. 'It's either thrive and evolve, or we just end up replicating our parents. So that 1980s connection is so interesting. There's half of us who are like, 'F**k it, I'm going to take this opportunity to thrive beyond the economic.' Because, no word of a lie, black Irish people my age? Disgustingly equipped and educated. They have masters degrees for no reason, bruv! What, to work in a Centra? Relax!' The Centra line is obviously a joke. 'They're taking over Google! What's going on?! Educated to s**t. Lawyers, medical doctors. We're not playing it small, because we're not allowed to. We're not allowed to play it small, because survival involves going all the way up here,' Olusanya raises their hand. 'But that's economic survival.' The social and spiritual aspect, they say, is another thing. Felicia Olusanya describes Octopus Children as a 'choreopoem', in which multiple artistic disciplines combine. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill I wonder whether the reaction Olusanya experienced to them being queer was also about a fear of another layer of oppression to contend with in a racist society. The conversations Olusanya had with family and others, they say, were 'not about hate, it's about fear. They were terrified, because they've built these communities and structures that incubate them safely. When you pop out of it for work, to socialise, you can still come back home. Even if I get racist experiences at work, there's a whole community that have my back I can come back to, so that is a temporary experience. That's how I think the older generation view it. Whereas if you're then gay, it's not the thing that's going to break you out 'there' in the white Irish world, but it will,' - or may - 'in the home that we've all built that's supposed to support you no matter what.' 'I want us to be able to have our communities, grow our communities, and not be caged by our communities, because that's also what's happening when people come from a space of survival, psychologically. I can't wait for a couple of generations where our people feel completely safe, that there isn't a demarcation. Sociologically and psychologically we all do this: you're drawn to people who are more like you, that's normal, so you'll always have those type of communities anyway. I'm not saying we need to dismantle our safety in our community in order to integrate. That's not what I'm asking for. But what I am saying, is to free ourselves from the limitations that the survival of our communities has brought. And one of those limitations,' Olusanya says, is a feeling 'that you can't be queer. Especially not out loud.' They have just returned from two years in Brussels, a place Olusanya went to out of a sense of adventure and 'safety, because it felt like the country held me well - I visited several parts of of Belgium before settling in Brussels - and I didn't want to go to London especially, very Dublin 2.0 vibes.' Living there, they were exposed to 'a type of freedom and blackness that I had never seen before or experienced', as well as new forms of dance and jazz. Now, Olusanya is ready for the next phase. They hope what Octopus Children does is make people 'one, feel visible in multiple ways, per tentacle. But two, that it frees us from the limitation of our own community – seeing a 'me'. I've come to accept – and no ego s**t – you just end up being a pioneer. You don't want to be a public figure, you don't want to be the person people look up to. But if you're going to do something different, you're going to end up being that ... With this show, I want to show my community – black Irish people – and the white Irish community, that this weird layered person-being can be visible, and it's completely okay. Visible and celebrated. I want black Irish girls, or non-binary people, or gays, to be like, 'Ahh! That's a bit of me!' and not feel like there's no representation. I hate the word representation, but it's so f***ing important. But I don't want to be the only one. I want to be able to make Octopus Children so octopus children can find it, so there can be a community of us, so we're very visible, very loud.'


Irish Independent
5 hours ago
- Irish Independent
The six ages of David Clifford – a mixture of Kerry greats that strikes fear into defenders across the land
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