Magdalen Laundries

Today has been spent looking at footage of the Good Shepherd Convent, with the rain belting down on my skylight it's not hard to imagine being there now. After filming the place in September, I sat in my car for twenty minutes waiting for the waves of nausea to pass. Photographing the site had a profound affect and left me more committed to seeing these places turned into museums, so no one can have the luxury of forgetting what was done to so many women.

I am slowly and laboriously compiling the section of my film that will discuss the laundries. This involves listening to my interviews, cutting the video and looking closer at the images I took in September. It's incredible to me how much emotion the footage conveys, perhaps it's only because I was there and remember how disturbing the very air was around that massive institution. 

As I look closely at these pans and tilts I notice each time the image is unsteady and I know my grasp on the camera faltered. I recall how it was hard to breathe in that place never mind hold the camera. I was only a visitor there for an hour. How was it to fill your 24 hours there? years, a lifetime? For the estimated 30,000 women who were incarcerated in the laundries that was a reality we will never understand.

The following sites are excellent resources on the Magdalen Laundries in Ireland. I encourage anyone to visit them.

http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/index.htm

http://www.netreach.net/~steed/magdalen.html
 
There is new pressure from the EU for the nuns to release the census information. To sign an online petition please follow this link.

http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/index.htm

I will post a clip about the laundries within the week. Thank you for reading and as always your comments and feedback are appreciated.

Rough Cut

Intro
http://vimeo.com/16381696

Gay Rights
http://vimeo.com/16417967

I'd love your comments and thoughts,

Louisa

Haas Presentation

This Friday I will be presenting my progress report to the other scholars, Leah and my mentor Katherine Sherwood. I will stand in front of my cohort for twenty minutes and attempt to compress five months of research into ten slides and a dozen concise points.

I started having nightmares last week. At least fear is a good motivating force,  I stuck my head down and have been pretty much hibernating since. Regardless of the fact that it is Halloween, the weekend has been spent editing an introduction to my film and a few excerpts. It's slightly odd and disorienting that forty hours of work breaks down to less than five minutes of video, still, each time I watch the time line I feel giddy and so happy to see my vision coming alive.

As the minutes fade to hours  and I focus on a 17 inch monitor  and not the Giants game I have to remind myself to recite my fathers favorite mantra; "There can be no art without discipline, and there can be no discipline without sacrifice".
On that note I'm back to the grind, Go Giants and Happy Halloween.

In My Editing Cave

The last week has been spent compressing all of my footage from Ireland. What would normally be a tedious, repetitive and timely endeavor was instead infused with a lot of laughter and reminiscing. Thanks go entirely to Raul Varela, my DP for transforming the process by sharing the burden of compressing and file renaming and by lightening the load by making me laugh.

Truly I am so happy with the beautiful imagery and scenes we captured and again I was touched by the raw beauty of these women's stories. A grand 28 of them! My real duty will be to do the stories and history justice. Being a young filmmaker, in both experience and less so in age, that will be where I will need to remind myself at every turn to ask for guidance and to stay open to letting grace into the process. I feel fortunate that the lessons I've learned with painting and writing can be applied to editing. These being to
1. Trust the process
2. To have faith in the vision of what I am creating
3. To do a little every day
4. Be easy on myself and not too critical of the work
Lastly I think it's really important to enjoy the process to the best of ones ability, and to remind oneself of the original intention.

To keep the process of blogging alive and vibrant for me and also for anyone who might read this,  I will start sharing my thoughts and images on the topic or section of the documentary that I am currently editing.
These posts will come in weekly and will feature links to other sites that talk about the subject I'm exploring.

Let me know your thoughts!

Brid - Craughwell halting site

Mighty Women

Katherine O' Donnell
Director Women Studies department UCD

Evelyn Morris
Mother of six and nurse for disabled adults in Ireland

Annajoy O'Gorman
Masters Student, Gender and Women Studies
Trinity College Dublin

Hard at work interviewing Annajoy on a beautiful day in Galway

Some things have changed and some have not!

March for Equality
Dublin 22nd 2010