Video & On Demand - Silence DVD & Download
Eoghan is a sound recordist who is returning to Ireland for the first time in 15 years, for a job capturing noises in areas free from man-made sound. His quest takes him to remote terrain, away from towns and villages. Throughout his journey, he is drawn into a series of encounters and conversations which gradually divert his attention towards a more intangible silence, bound up with the sounds of the life he had left behind. Influenced by elements of folklore and archive, Silence unfolds with a quiet intensity, where poetic images reveal an absorbing meditation on themes relating to sound and silence, history, memory and exile.
BFI London Film Festival
Dublin Critics Circle 'Michael Dwyer Discovery Award' 2012
DVD extras: 2 documentaries by Pat Collins
Oileán Thoraí: A Documentary on Tory Island (2002, 53 min.)
Pilgrim (2008, 13 min.)
His first film, Michael Hartnett - A Necklace of Wrens, won the Jury Award at the Celtic Film Festival in 2000. Talking to the Dead centred on the Irish funeral tradition, and Oiléan Thoraí won Best Irish Documentary at the Irish Film and Television Awards in 2003. Abbas Kiarostami – The Art of Living (co-directed with Fergus Daly) was a fine portrait of the Iranian director, while Rebel County used the shooting of Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley to explore the War of Independence in West Cork. Collins has directed documentaries on the Irish writer Frank O’Connor, the poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and the Connemara-based writer and cartographer Tim Robinson. His film, John McGahern: A Private World, again won Best Irish Documentary in 2005, and in the same year Marooned won the Best Irish Sports Documentary award. The feature portrait, Gabriel Byrne: Stories from Home, was completed in 2008, and the film essay What We Leave in Our Wake in 2011.
More details on his films can be found at: Harvestfilms.ie
1999 Michael Hartnett – A Necklace of Wrens
2000 Talking to the Dead
2001 Idir na Línte
2002 Oileán Thoraí (Tory Island)
2003 Frank O'Connor - The Lonely Voice
Abbas Kiarostami – The Art of Living [co-directed with Fergus Daly]
2004 Marooned
John McGahern: A Private World
2005 Domhnach in Éireann (Sunday in Ireland) [co-directed with Conor Hammond, Eamon Little, Adrian McCarth]
Beyond the Mountain
Cathair Corcaigh
Rebel County
2006 David Marcus: A Conversation with Dermot Bolger
2007 Na Duganna
Ar Thóir Logainmeacha
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill - Taibhsí i mBéal na Gaoithe
2008 Loch Dearg [co-directed with Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde]
Gabriel Byrne: Stories from Home
Pilgrim
2009 The Great Irish Famine - Remember Skibbereen
Lough Hyne
2011 What We Leave in Our Wake
Tim Robinson: Connemara
Fiction
2012 Silence
Director |
Pat Collins |
Producer |
Tina Moran |
Written By |
Pat Collins |
Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde |
|
Sharon Whooley |
|
Film Editor |
Tadhg O’Sullivan |
Director Of Photography |
Richard Kendrick |
Location Sound |
John Brennan |
Éamon Little |
|
Research & Casting |
Anna Rodgers |
Sharon Whooley |
|
Production Manager |
Eimear O’Kane |
Location Manager |
Paddy Cahill |
Additional Camera (Tory Island) |
Colm Hogan |
Location Sound (Berlin) |
John Brennan |
Chris Watson |
|
Production Manager (Berlin) |
Donogh McCabe |
Set Design / Props |
Brien Vahey |
Owen Mac Carthaigh (Glenveagh) |
|
Script Editor |
Mark McIlrath |
Post Production Co-ordinator |
Ciara Baker |
Special Effects |
Michael Regan |
Quiet Areas Acoustic and |
|
Environment Consultant |
Declan Waugh |
Online Editor |
Cillian Duffy |
Sound Mix |
Ken Galvin |
Sound and Music Editor |
Tadhg O’Sullivan |
Bord Scannán na hÉireann |
|
Chief Executive |
James Hickey |
Production Executive |
Alan Maher |
Produced with the support of |
Investment incentives for the |
Irish Film Industry provided by |
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the Government of Ireland. |
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Developed with the support of |
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the MEDIA Programme of the |
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European Union. |
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Developed with the assistance of |
Bord Scannán na hÉireann / |
The Irish Film Board. |
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Filmed on location in Ireland. |
By Resound Films Ltd. |
With the co-operation of The |
|
National Parks and Wildlife |
|
Service (NPWS) of the |
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Department of the Environment, |
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Heritage and Local Government. |
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A South Wind Blows/Harvest Films production. |
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Made with the support of the |
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Broadcasting Authority of Ireland |
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in association with Raidió Teilifís Éireann |
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And with the participation of |
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Bord Scannán na hÉireann / Irish Film Board |
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Ireland 2012 84 minutes |
|
Cast |
Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde |
Hilary O’Shaughnessy |
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Andrew Bennett |
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Jens K. Müller |
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Patrick O’Connor |
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Michael Harding |
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Tommy Fahy |
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Tim Robinson |
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Peter Lacey |
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Marie Coyne |
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Jordan Shiels |
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Paul Rodgers |
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Music |
‘The Breeze and I’ (English translation of Andalucia) |
Performed by Nellie Nic Giolla Bhríde |
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Written by Ernesto Lecuona and Al Stillman |
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‘1671 Milton Samson 1122 Add |
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thy Spear, a Weavers beam, and |
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seven-times-folded shield’ |
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Performed & composed by Akira Rabelais |
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‘Symphony No. 9, Fourth Movement’ |
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Gustav Mahler |
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‘Caves’ and ‘From Monday Afternoon’ |
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Performed and Composed by Karl Burke |
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‘Derechos’ |
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Performed and Composed by Damian Valles |
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‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’ |
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Performed and Composed by Sandy Denny |
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‘I Fall Apart’ |
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Performed and Composed by Rory Gallagher |
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‘Amhrán na Leabhar’ |
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Performed & composed by Sean Mac Erlaine |
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‘An Chúilfhionn’ |
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Trad. Performed by Nellie Nic Giolla Bhríde |
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‘Is Trua nach Bhfuil mé in Éirinn’ & ‘A Pháidí, a Grá’ |
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Trad. Performed by Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde |
'Five favourite new films (all of them, quite by accident, to do with love):
Silence... Also quasi-documentary, Collins’s feature debut about an Irish sound engineer seeking locations free from man-made sound is finally a touching love-letter to the notion of home.'
Geoff Andrew, Head of film programme, BFI Southbank, in Sight and Sound, January 2013
‘Renowned for his documentary work, Pat Collins has delivered a remarkable first fiction feature with Silence, a simple, haunting and poetic vision of Ireland which brings to mind few precedents and defies easy categorisation... an absorbing experience.’
Michael Hayden, London Film Festival Catalogue
‘The symphonic quality to the cinematography, together with the quality of Mac Giolla Bhride’s turn in the central role, results in a spectacle that will resonate with those who appreciate quality cinema. Silence is a deeply personal story, but it’s loaded with a poignant universal resonance – it’s a silence that can be said to speak volumes.’
Sunday Independent
‘Pat Collins, an unclassifiable Irish talent, returns with another starkly beautiful, deliberately confounding quasi-documentary. Close your eyes after a first viewing and you will recall widescreen shots of lapping seas, big skies and sprawling wetlands.’
Donald Clarke, Irish Times
Read the full review
★★★★
'Silence is a remarkable film: daring, original, even groundbreaking in its way. Though my -- or indeed any -- description of the film will make it sound pretentious and offputtingly arid, in fact it's anything but. Eoghan's task might be ethereal, but Collins grounds his film deep in the western soil.'
Paul Whitington, Irish Independent
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★★★★
'surprising and unquiet meditation on man, memory and landscape.'
Wally Hammond, Time Out London
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★★★★
Michael Pattison Front Row reviews at LFF
'Silence is for Ireland what sleep furiously was for Wales'
Matt Turner Front Row Reviews
Image magazine
'Director Pat Collins is the star here. He manages to get so much right and he uses such simple and beautiful touches to achieve this. His use of archive footage is superb and even the use of maps to give the audience the idea of where Eoghan travels is so simple and so successful that you can’t help but be utterly impressed.'
Thumped.com
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'It's a haunting film, though, not least because it feels like a rare indulgence, allowing yourself the tactile pleasure of stepping outside the blare of the day's rat-run to wallow in the luxury of hush, space and stalled time. It's as if the entire film is one long Pinteresque pause, a deep drawing of some life-giving breath, and for that alone it's a hugely enjoyable experience.'
Declan Burke, Irish Examiner
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'Silence offers its viewers the space to contemplate the images, the soundscapes and these intermittent exchanges.'
Anthony Nield, The Digital Fix Film
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"AMAZING. Silence is not just a film of staggeringly beautiful cinematography and overwhelmingly evocative sound, it is an island of calm in the tumultuous sea of life that allows us to pause and take stock of the world around us."
Read Review in Next ProjectionRead 'Wildtrack', a entry about Silence in a blog dedicated to landscapes and the arts.
Read a review of Silence by Michael Pattison in Front Row Reviews
Download pressbook Download Poster
For photos, please see the press section of the New Wave Films website