Screenings
Town of Strangers + The Portland Lookalike Agency Double Bill
Town of Strangers, is a documentary of the imagination’ going deep into the experience of dreaming, migration and home.
TOWN OF STRANGERS
They say there are only two stories worth telling: a person goes on a journey; and a stranger comes to town.
★★★★
Wonderful…Irish film-maker Treas O’Brien has created a valuable and empathic documentary essay project about history, memory and community. …This film is an invigorating, refreshing experience.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Town of Strangers, is a documentary of the imagination’ going deep into the experience of dreaming, migration and home.
Cinematographer Treasa O’Brien asks people in the town of Gort, one of the most diverse towns in Ireland, what home means to them and how they came to be in this unlikely place.
People who have come from elsewhere – Syrian refugees, Traveller teenagers, Brazilian meat factory workers, hippies from England, or people from just down the road – are interviewed in neutral spaces and in their houses, making coffee, tending to their gardens, cooking, doing their makeup.
‘Home’ in this sense consists of a series of actions as much as it does of a physical space. All the while those filmed reveal intimate stories of their families, loves and journeys. They describe people they miss, things they’ve left behind, their dreams.
PORTLAND LOOKALIKE AGENCY
The Portland Lookalike Agency is film about a fictitious organisation providing celebrity lookalikes drawn from the real residents of Portland.
Over the years the island has weathered a steady economic decline and celebrity status can be perceived as a short cut to prosperity. Presented as a film, this ’love story to Portland’ explores the juxtaposition of hope and realisation with a gentle hair-ruffling fondness, wit and a healthy dose of black humour.
They say there are only two stories worth telling: a person goes on a journey; and a stranger comes to town.
★★★★
Wonderful…Irish film-maker Treas O’Brien has created a valuable and empathic documentary essay project about history, memory and community. …This film is an invigorating, refreshing experience.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Town of Strangers, is a documentary of the imagination’ going deep into the experience of dreaming, migration and home.
Cinematographer Treasa O’Brien asks people in the town of Gort, one of the most diverse towns in Ireland, what home means to them and how they came to be in this unlikely place.
People who have come from elsewhere – Syrian refugees, Traveller teenagers, Brazilian meat factory workers, hippies from England, or people from just down the road – are interviewed in neutral spaces and in their houses, making coffee, tending to their gardens, cooking, doing their makeup.
‘Home’ in this sense consists of a series of actions as much as it does of a physical space. All the while those filmed reveal intimate stories of their families, loves and journeys. They describe people they miss, things they’ve left behind, their dreams.
PORTLAND LOOKALIKE AGENCY
The Portland Lookalike Agency is film about a fictitious organisation providing celebrity lookalikes drawn from the real residents of Portland.
Over the years the island has weathered a steady economic decline and celebrity status can be perceived as a short cut to prosperity. Presented as a film, this ’love story to Portland’ explores the juxtaposition of hope and realisation with a gentle hair-ruffling fondness, wit and a healthy dose of black humour.
