Directing
In 1985, the village of Ballinspittle in Ireland was the site of a mass visionary experience. Worshippers at the local grotto saw the statue of the Virgin Mary come to life. Soon, thousands made the pilgrimage and—for a summer—the phenomenon gripped the country. Almost forty years later, a handful of local devotees remain, including the statue’s dutiful caretaker Patrick Joseph Simms. Through Simms and a chorus of locals, the film documents both the mystical landscape of rural Irish Catholicism and a terrible darkness beneath its surface.
In a fantastical domed theme park in the middle of the desert east of Jerusalem visitors and workers have an oasis, however absurd.
In a greenhouse in England, a military veteran talks about his experiences as a soldier in Afghanistan. Clement Boland served with the British Army in Helmand Province for more than ten years and has suffered from PTSD since his return. His therapy now consists of gardening. In five insightful scenes, he talks about how the landscapes of East Sussex and Afghanistan keep intertwining because of his repeated reliving of memories of the war. One image he can’t get out of his mind is of an Afghan man who “looked like Jesus.” Clement wasn’t the one who fired the shot, but he feels guilt nonetheless.
Divided into three parts, Cold Stack charts the melancholic decline of the oil rig industry in the Scottish Highlands. The film uncovers the destructive effects of the collapse on those who were employed by the industry, and showcases the grand visual spectacle of the dereliction of the rigs in the Cromarty Firth. The first part documents the Kishorn fabrication yard on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, encountering those who worked there during the great boom of the 1970s and 80s, and showing the ghostly remains of the yard in its current all but abandoned state. The second part shows the Cromarty Firth, where dozens of unused oil rigs are ‘cold stacked’, covering the effects of economic decline on those who formerly worked constructing the platforms. The final section looks to the future, considering the otherworldly beauty of the new form of energy that is dominant in the highlands: wind farming.
