Short film by DCU lecturer and performer to feature at Kilmainham Gaol exhibition, celebrating author and Irish revolutionary Dorothy Macardle
Before me in a dream, a short film conceptualised by the Dorothy Macardle Archive and Performance project (DMAPP) creators, Sharon Mc Ardle and writer Declan Gorman along with cinematographer Colm Mullen, delves into the unpublished prison journals of Dorothy Macardle. The film will be featured as part of the exhibition, ‘Unsurrendered Spirits’: the prison writings of Dorothy Macardle, which opens at Kilmainham Gaol in September and will run until December.
Dorothy Macardle was imprisoned without trial by the Irish Free State in 1922 due to her anti-Treaty activities. Her papers and manuscripts were burned by Free State soldiers at the time of her arrest. She kept a series of prison diaries during her six months in Mountjoy and later Kilmainham. Upon her death in 1958, her remaining papers were destroyed by a family member. However, fragments of her prison journals survive, where she not only writes about politics and the hardships of imprisonment but also recounts vivid dreams and visions, some of which eerily foreshadow future events. These dream writings and her exploration of the subconscious anticipated her later success as a Gothic novelist of international renown. The film draws from Macardle’s writings and her later success in Gothic Noir cinema, capturing lingering impressions of the artistry, vision, trauma and ultimate triumph of a remarkable figure in Irish history.
The film is the final part of the Prison Notebooks trilogy and was funded by the Bank of Ireland’s Begin Together Arts Fund. The second part of the trilogy, Dorothy’s Prison Notebooks, is a radio documentary that follows Mc Ardle and Gorman as they set out to create a one-woman theatre show based on Macardle’s diaries. The programme (see link below) was originally commissioned for The Lyric Feature on RTÉ lyric fm and broadcast on November 6 2022. It received funding from RTÉ Independent Radio Productions and Coimisiún Na Meán's Sound and Vision scheme.
Sharon Mc Ardle lectures at the School of Arts Education and Movement, Dublin City University. She is a performing artist and co-creator of DMAPP.
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