In their debut documentary Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor take as their point of departure the compelling 18th Century figure, Ambrose O’Higgins – father of Bernardo O’Higgins, the first leader of Independent Chile – and attempt to retrace his remarkable journey from Ireland to Chile. Having long dreamt of making a biopic of O’Higgins, this wayward and wry documentary is the filmmakers’ attempt to realise this dream through a personal voyage into the idea of the cinematic location. However, as they speculate on the idea of place and what O’Higgins embodies, the filmmakers continually get sidetracked by a competing story of immigration and displacement. A story that began with a newspaper cutting from 1937, concerning an 11 month old baby who travelled unaccompanied, by ship, across the Atlantic from New York to Cobh. Gradually, and not without humour, these intertwining narratives uncover ideas about the transformative powers of travelling, as looked at through the peculiar prism of the Irish experience.Read More »
