Naomi Wilson
Directing
Biography
Naomi Wilson is an Irish filmmaker, who graduated with a Degree in Fine Art Sculpture in Dublin in 1988. After spending ten years in New York, she returned to live in the west of Ireland where she set up Loophead Studio. Together with artist Brian Doyle, she has produced a number of short animated films (influenced by the materials and folklore of the area) that have screened at festivals internationally.
Known For
"The Cailleach was dependent on this one thing... every hundred years she must get back to the water and immerse herself so that she might become young again." This film is an interpretation of fragments of the ancient myth of the "cailleach", old hag, otherworld female, mother earth, sovereignty queen, or witch. Told using a large scale puppet and actors moving through real landscape.
An Cailleach Bhéarra
Adaptation from David Thomson's book "People of the Sea", telling of his experience as a child, when he first encounters a selchie. Told in drawings of sand, a material inhabiting the space between land and sea, like the selchie itself.
Among Strangers
Fragment of folklore invoking the archetype of hunter and hare. A live action journey that follows a surreal dream vision, stretching from the stratosphere to the physical realm and into the internal space of the mind.
Ossian & The Hare
Folktale from the Loop Head penisula about a trickster fox, narrated by seanachai Marty Keane. Told in drawings made of sand from Rinevilla beach, below Rehy hill, where the story is located.
Rehy Fox
"Hunting the Hare" is a short film created for singer/songwriter Emma Langford. It has been presented in theatres alongside several short vignettes created between 2022 and 2025. What they have in common is taking a poetic approach to animation and exploring the process of drawing in sand as a kind of excavation, a tracing of thought and memory and a means by which to navigate internal landscapes.