Pavee Lackeen: The Traveller Girl

Pavee Lackeen: The Traveller Girl (Perry Ogden, 2005)

An intimate portrait of a resilient and spirited young girl and her proud and dignified family, who are part of Ireland's 'traveller' community. An intimate portrait of a resilient and spirited young girl and her proud and dignified family, who are part of Ireland's 'traveller' community.

This seems to be pretending not to be a documentary, judging by the credits, in which some people have other names than their own. This must be for some moral or legal reasons which are obscure to me. It's clearly a doco.

There's not much to this. Point the camera at it. I suppose it's remarkable the extent to which the subjects do not refer to the documentation, as they do not at all do so.

It seems important to hold on to the final image: the only long shot. Winnie and a young sibling have just gone 200 metres to get some water from a pipe which for some reason is flowing continuously. They then proceed back to the line of trailers (caravans): giving the viewer plenty of time to think about the life they leave - all of them without running water, with only petrol-generated power, no schooling, petrol-sniffing, random violence ...

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Garry Gillard | reviews | New: 30 March, 2017 | Now: 31 March, 2017