For a list of cinemas and dates, click here: The Pipe in Cinemas

The last 6 months have been like a rollercoaster for The Pipe ever since it premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh back in July. Indeed, after 3 years of shooting and a year in the edit, I had no idea what the reaction would be from people, especially the locals, given that they had no idea what was in the film. That night of Thursday the 8th of July in Galway was a really nervewracking experience as people began to arrive, a large section of them from Rossport and the surrounding villages close to the Corrib project. Having filmed these people during their daily lives, at the protests and during some very difficult and painful times over the past 3 years, I had no idea how the community would react to seeing their souls bared on the big screen.

The reaction was really incredible, especially from people whose lives had been so intensely affected by the Corrib project, and all the emotions of the past 10 years seemed to flood back in those 83 minutes in the Town Hall Theatre; the joy, the humour, the pain of the jailings and the heartache of seeing their own community ripped apart by infighting. And although parts of the film were difficult for many of the people to watch, they seemed to really appreciate seeing their story told for the first time without being manipulated or spun.

Having sold out all of our screenings beforehand, I was a bundle of nerves going into our first screening as I had no idea if the Canadians would actually ‘get’ the story. Remember, here was a small community in one of the most isolated corners of Ireland with a very particular story, sense of humour. and a very unique way with words (at times more like Irish in terms of sentence construction). Remarkably, the Canadians, traditionally a fairly conservative audience, reacted very emotionally to the film and gave us a standing ovation! That was the point for me when I knew that this story would travel, and I was delighted that the audience could empathise with the people on screen. People saw in the characters their own neighbours, friends and relations, and felt that this could be a  community anywhere – Canada, Nigeria, Russia – any community whose rights have been set aside by their own government in favour of a very powerful private interest – in this case it just happens to be Shell. Off the back of Toronto we got a lot of interest from ordinary people and distributors, and from there on we were ‘out the gap’.

We screened in the London and Amsterdam film festivals with great success, just narrowly missing out on the top prize in the prestigious ‘Green Screen’ competition to Into Eternity by Michael Madsen, but the judges felt The Pipe deserved an ‘honorable mention’ none the less. We screened at the Cork Film Festival to a sell-out crowd of 250 at the Gate cinema who then offered us a 2 week cinema run on the back of the success of that screening on a cold, wet Monday night. The Cork audience was probably the most vocal audience I have ever experienced – laughing out loud, expressing their shock at the treatment of some of the characters in the film, and taking me on in a very frank and challenging debate in the Q&A afterwards. Only last week we screened at the Foyle Film Festival in Derry and picked up the award for Best Documentary, and I was amazed at the depth of knowledge people had up in Derry regarding the politics and history surrounding Corrib!

Now that we are on the verge of a national cinema release, I just find it hard to believe that the story of this small isolated community is now going up against the big Hollywood blockbusters like Narnia and Harry Potter in cinemas around the country. However, I think it is crucial that the film is released at this time, despite it being the most competitive time of the year in cinemas. We are now in the middle of possibly the worst crisis to hit this country since the foundation of the State, our politicians having put powerful private interests ahead of the greater good of the citizens with devastating consequences, and I feel that the Corrib story is a microcosm of that larger picture.  Hopefully The Pipe will in some way give people an insight into this, but also show them that even in times of great despair and seemingly insurmountable challenges, people can find amazing resources within themselves, and within their communities, to get through the hard times, and even share a joke every now and then!

Risteard Ó Domhnaill
Director
The Pipe

• The Pipe goes on release from Friday December 3rd.

Special Events:

• There will be a Gala Opening at the IFI on December 2nd at 18.00 with a Q&A with Risteard and members of the Rossport community.
• On December 4th at 13.30 there will be a panel discussion entitled The Pipe: Rossport and the Corrib Gas Project chaired by journalist Lorna Siggins about the project and its impact on the community. Free but ticketed event.
• On December 11th at 13.30 The Pipe: Politics and Film will look at the role art and filmmaking can play within a political campaign. Free but ticketed event.

"The Solitaire" photo: Peter Sweetman

“Tháinig long ó Valparaiso”

On the 8^th September, 2008, the world’s largest pipelaying ship sailed into Broadhaven Bay. This was not Pádraig de Brun’s ship of dreams but  a menacing symbol of a powerful multinational oil company threatening the serenity of this beautifully scenic area. This was the climax of a story that began with the discovery of a major gas find off the North West coast of Ireland.

The news was greeted with excitement in an area left behind and forgotten by successive governments. This would create jobs and prosperity and inject new life into a place drained of it’s lifeblood by emigration. There were few, if any dissenting voices. So, where did things go wrong? A combination of political ineptitude and a lack of proper consultation on the part of government and the oil company helped create the long running battle that is still going on between locals, the Gardaí and the multinational – Shell.

Lorna Siggins – marine correspondent for the Irish Times – has reported on these events since they began. When other journalists wrote about the more sensational issues such as the protests, Siggins told things as they were, without fear or favour. So who better to chronicle this saga? She uses a narrative style to guide the reader through a timetable of events that include meetings, oral hearings, court cases, protests et cetera, and her attention to detail is simply amazing  She brings to life the main characters and tells the story as it happens  This book is full of human stories, tragic in places, but with touches of humour All is told against a background of facts carefully referenced using excellent notes at the back.

The story begins with an aptly titled chapter – “Bedrock”.  This traces the history of the area from the geological formation of oil and gas, to the oldest farm settlement in the world, right down to the present.  This is an area with a rich cultural and archaeological past, ancient monuments dot the landscape, and stories of the Children of Lir and of local giants like Caocháin abound. There are references to the literary history of the place – Séamus Heaney’s poem on the Céide Fields, J. M. Synge’s “Playboy of the Western World’’ and Robert Llyod Praeger’s description of the area as “the wildest, loneliest stretch of country to be had in all of Ireland”. It is a unique landscape with a fragile ecosystem that has been designated as an S.A.C. (special area of conservation) by the European Commission.

One of the things that strike the reader is the number of characters that inhabit the story – politicians, priests, Shell personnel, members of Mayo County Council, to name a few. Included in this list are the concerned members of the local community who weave in and out of this story. John McGahern once said that one has to be from an area in order to understand it, and Siggins seems to have an intimate insight into the local character. There’s the straight talking fisherman, Pat O Donnell,the calm stoical Mary Corduff and the volatile Maura Harrington.

The story has plenty of drama – a landslide tears through the village of Glengad, men go to jail, a hunger strike occurs when the world’s largest pipe laying ship arrives. Her account of the arrival of the “Solitaire” is vividly portrayed. We can picture this mammoth vessel surrounded by naval ships, fishing boats and Garda ribs in a scene reminiscent of a naval battle.

This is a story that had to be told. Shell thought they were coming to an isolated, backward area, which they probably were, and that, consequently, the people were backward, which they are not.  Siggins quotes Lelia Doolan who said that there had ‘’never been a blanket rejection of the gas for the betterment of life’’, but there ‘’were and are other routes, other options.  No wonder Shell is trying to mend it’s hand with various inducements and sponsorships and scholarships.’’ These people are not Luddites – they want progress but not at a cost to their health, their landscape or their culture. The book ends with a quote from the late Justin Keating, former minister for energy, ‘’I hope that it is all done in a social context, building a community rather than giving out money.’’  Well done to Lorna Siggins, for, to quote Fintan O Toole in his foreword, ‘’writing a book that demands to be read by anyone interested in the workings of contemporary power.’’

Mary Caulfield

For more information or to purchase the book, follow the link below (there is no revenue deal between the publishers and this website):

Buy Online

Mon 08 Nov | 9:00pm | Gate Cinema

There will be a Questions and Answers session after the film with the director Risteard O Domhnaill and it promises to be a very robust discussion!

Tickets available here @ CFF

London Film Festival Review: The Pipe

11 days ago on 10/23/2010 | Xander Markham

5 comments

At its heart, the story of The Pipe is a profound and disturbing failure of democracy. It’s all too easy to take for granted the numerous controversies and immoralities that we hear of governments taking part in on the news because they always seem to be behind the scenes dealing, causing little or no direct damage to the civilian population. So what if a politician is in some corporation’s back pocket? It’s not great, but at least I still have my house and livelihood. Risteard O’Domhnaill’s documentary shines a spotlight on an ongoing battle between Shell Oil and the Irish coastal town of Rossport, whose small but familial community found themselves thrown to the wolves by the government which should have been protecting them.

O’Domhnaill follows five citizens whose peaceful protests see them beaten by police acting as corporate enforcers, arrested and jailed for months on the word of officers without evidence or proveable charge, and have their fishing boats impounded (and as fisherman Pat O’Donnell revealed in the subsequent Q&A, later sunk by masked thugs) for protecting the waters where the fishing rights were exclusively theirs. It’s impossible not to laugh at the ridiculousness of seeing the Irish government send a navy warship to break up a barricade of tiny boats, led by O’Donnell, whose sole crime is making sure Shell’s enormous tanker doesn’t damage their fishing equipment.

Although Rossport’s struggles may appear extreme, the film shows the extent to which the democratic system has been mutilated by governments desperate to cling onto power at any cost, rather than aiding the people they are supposed to be serving. Throughout Rossport’s fight to preserve their coastline, they find laws being habitually broken by those who put them in place.

Despite being represented in the media as ideologically spiteful, the locals repeat over and over again that they have no problem with Shell mining the gas and making profits, but refuse to allow their livelihoods and local ecosystem to be destroyed in the process. Should the gas line be put in place, the fishing industry on which the town thrives would be ruined and the environmental damage (especially to the nearby river, impotently ‘protected’ by the European Union, where salmon swim upstream to spawn) would be catastrophic. It was revealed during the Q&A that the locals were informed by Shell they would have “about thirty seconds” to evacuate if the pipeline ruptured before their homes would be destroyed. Contrast the corporation’s blind tearing up of the (public) local beach to farmer Willie Corduff’s knowledge of the volatile local land inherited from his father – a bog through which the pipe is projected to be laid has such unstable ground that it wobbles under the feet of anyone crossing it – and it becomes apparent how real that danger is.

Submissions to Shell for potential alternate routes go ignored and as the bullying by police and corporate pressure intensifies (according to the Q&A, Shell have reportedly begun offering large bribes to select members of the community), the once peaceful town becomes increasingly divided. One of the greatest tragedies is seeing how many of the policemen, now so vigourous in their beating of the pacifist protestors, used to be long-time family friends of those manning the picket lines. Watching the townsfolk address officers by name and make ignored pleas for clemency and respect exemplifies how false the old adage that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ really is. In truth, all it takes for a man to turn on his oldest friends is a day-glo jacket, a baton and some official orders to act out.

Shell refused to take part in the film, which does result in a somewhat one-sided perspective, but director O’Domhnaill never descends into baseless moralising. The story is told through the eyes of the ‘Rossport five’ (although Pat O’Donnell takes a lead role for the film’s final act) as they go about their efforts to protect what is rightfully theirs and are blocked or dismissed – often illegally – at every step. As the film’s editor Nigel O’Reagan stated during the Q&A, the decision was made to exclude any footage where judgment was expressed on Shell’s actions in favour of leaving it to the audience to make the moral calls for themselves. The five locals were present at the screening and Pat O’Donnell told a more recent story of when Shell overstepped their rights to lay undersea pipeline by fifty metres and were taken to court by O’Donnell’s son Jonathan. Even though the judged deemed Shell’s actions unlawful, he stated that it would be ‘unfair’ to the corporation to ask them to retract the pipeline and ruled in their favour – leaving Jonathan O’Donnell to pick up the legal costs.

At under ninety minutes (reduced, according to editor O’Reagan, from a first cut of nine hours taken from over four years’ worth of footage), the film is a tightly told story that makes its points without labouring or preaching. Rossport makes a beautiful setting and is elegantly photographed, from the tall green hills and rolling ocean waves to homely charm of the town itself, making it all the more distressing when we have to watch it being dug up by an army of invading tractors. If The Cove (an outstanding 2009 documentary about dolphin slaughter in Japan, which like The Pipe also exposed a wide-reaching web of political and human cruelty) horrified in its representations of animal abuse, anyone who has ever taken pleasure in a beautiful landscape will feel similarly sick at the mechanical desecration of Glengad beach.

The Pipe may be additionally topical in the wake of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – an event the locals said in the Q&A that they were morbidly thankful for, as it brought the dangers of pipeline faults into the public consciousness – but the lasting story will be one of how easily good men can be betrayed by the people they elected to protect them and the once trusted friends who sold out for the slightest whispers of power. Although the film ends with Shell in temporary retreat, the legal wranglings are still ongoing and Shell continue to lay down the pipe, apparently hoping that they can finish before the cases against them reach court and content to deal with a fine as long as their work is completed, no matter the human or communal cost.

Despite the distressing nature of the film’s subject matter, it’s the locals who keep the tone hopeful and uplifting. Pat O’Connell, in a moment of joy, gets the closing line and it’s a perfect summation of the passion, broad humour and gutsy bravado that keeps him going. As long as there are good people willing to stand up to the higher powers that try to bully them (Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern outright condemns the townspeople for standing up for themselves in a clip near the beginning of the film), their voices will be eventually heard. Whether or not those voices can make an impact will surely be the ultimate judgment on whether we in the Western world can still call ourselves free, or even if we deserve to.

Score: 8.45 – Great (Movies that score between 8.00 and 8.50 are great representations of their genre that everyone should see in theatres on opening night