hcmf//: AN GLÉACHT by Caoimhín Breathnach and Jennifer Walshe
Phipps Hall, Creative Arts Building
Image: Still from AN GLÉACHT
A film work by Caoimhín Breathnach and CMC Composer Jennifer Walshe. At hcmf// 2023, AN GLÉACHT will be screened with a live improvisational music accompaniment from Nick Roth, Lee Patterson and Úna Monaghan.
Outsider artist Caoimhín Breathnach (1934-2009) lived as a recluse in Knockvicar, Co. Roscommon for all his life. Breathnach’s artistic practice focussed on the creation of “subliminal” tapes and films which he believed possessed the capacity to shift consciousness. In these works, Ogham magickal scales, crystallography, astronomy, folklore and natural phenomena are combined with found audio and visual material to produce an idiosyncratic, esoteric system of correspondences.
Breathnach spent the last years of his life planning a film called AN GLÉACHT. The work was to combine subliminal tapes and films with filmed footage showing a sequence of occult rituals. For the 2015 Cork Film Festival, hcmf// 2023 Composer in Residence Jennifer Walshe (Breathnach’s great-niece) was commissioned to complete AN GLÉACHT, which was screened alongside live musical accompaniment from musicians Panos Ghikas, Nick Roth, M.C. Schmidt (Matmos) and Walshe.
Produced by hcmf// supported by Culture Ireland and Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
Commissioned by Cork Film Festival.
Tickets
Free admission. The film will last 30 minutes.
Content warning: gore (video footage).