CinÉireann / Issue 9 43
from 14 years as a teacher in Kilbarrack and growing up in Kilbarrack and staying in touch with people that I taught, that the idea that you can have working class, 1000's of them living in the same small area, and the notion that this is automatically a problem is so insulting. I live in a ghetto, Clontarf, you know. It's a middle-class ghetto. Nobody has ever suggested that getting all of the middle-class people together is a problem. That maybe it would be a good idea to disperse them. That notion of social housing, that these are somehow people who are incapable of maturing or rearing children. It's absurd and it's also really insulting.
When you see young families being caught up in this and forced to live in hotels, it's despicable. And some are not even counted in the statistics. They are the unseen homeless.
People will say that there will always be homelessness. And this is true. But the cases that are being presented more often than not...in the case of the men who had to be sectioned during the snow because the would have frozen to death...they had to be sectioned to get them in off the street...the notion that that's normal or that these are the people that you are dealing with. And they are, but they are not the whole story. So that's why the opportunity was there. It was just those little details that the woman gave that really made it something that I could work with. Once you get a family in a car and a woman with a phone, it's an easy story to tell. It's just about selecting the little details. You are confined in a way, which in terms of storytelling is a good thing.
That confinement an be a good thing for a film too.
If it has the pace and it has the energy and the tension then it'll be a good thing. That'll be in the editing.
And finally did you know director Paddy Breathnach before Rosie?
I've known Paddy for a long time. We'd never worked together before. But from years ago when we had a half-baked idea that never went anywhere. I can't even remember what it was. But from then I've always felt that I'd like to work with Paddy. So here's the opportunity and its been great.
Rosie is out in Irish cinemas on October 12th.