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AN AWARD-WINNING documentary about the disappearance of public phoneboxes from the Irish landscape is to represent Ireland at the EU Film Festival in China next month.
In 2009, Eircom announced that they were dismantling around half of the existing boxes. The boxes were being used so little by a nation of mobile phone owners that it was costing the company more money to maintain them than they yielded in actual phone calls.
Director/producers Ross Whitaker and Aideen O’Sullivan decided to travel the country collecting people’s recollections of how the phonebox had once been integral to society and communication. The result – the award-winning short documentary Bye Bye Now – is to be screened at the Chinese festival which takes place across four cities, Beijing, Tianjin, Chengdu and Shenzhen.
The film, from True Films, was supported by the Irish Film Board’s Reality Bites scheme.
Co-director Whitaker said today:
We’ve been very lucky that Bye Bye Now has screened all over the world and somehow successfully communicated a particular type of Irish nostalgia. We weren’t sure anyone outside of Ireland would get it. Hopefully the people in China will too.
You don’t have to travel to China to see it as we have embedded the doc below.
Keep an eye out for the touching story of a long-distance romance conducted through the medium of a remote rural phonebox – and the tale of two large ladies caught out by the rain… and by the dimensions of the box where they took shelter.
(via TrueFilmsTV/Youtube)
Director/producers: Ross Whitaker, Aideen O’Sullivan. Editor: Andrew Hearne. © True Films.
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Lovely little movie, but perhaps an example where they could have considered adding subtitles as some of the accents will be quite tough for non Irish to follow … especially if this is aimed at a foreign audience. Having lived abroad for over 7 years, quite a number of my friends (for whom English is their second if not third language) have commented on this at one time or another.
For example, it amazed me the first time i saw it, but on Belgian TV (for a Belgian audience remember), its quite common to see some shows to put in Flemish/Dutch subtitles when the person speaking has a very strong accent!
Hi Feilim,
As it happens, there is another version of Bye Bye Now which has subtitles on it for that exact reason. That version (with subtitles) will be sent to China as far as I know. The subtitled version is the one that has been so successful on the international circuit (the filmmakers have won a number of major international awards for the doc).
So good point by your good self – and one they have sorted!
Cheers, Susan
Wonderful little movie.
Poor Superman :(
Love the tshirt Ross, are ur changing rooms running out.:-)
Heartwarming and beautifully made. A touching tribute to a vanishing Ireland.
Had a few knee tremblers in them back in the day
Very good film and very poignant. I saw it recently on RTÉ and today saw a truck o. The m50 with a phone box on the back of it. Reckon people are gona start robbing the last few ones that are left.
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