Try!
It has always struck me as appropriate that scoring points in a rugby game is called ’a try’. The effort put in is immense, and the word ’try’ seems to reflect that joint endeavour. The whole team has to contribute, unlike football, where an individual or two take the entire credit for a goal. With this in mind, it is inspiring to see the commitment and teamwork on display as two Irish teams prepare to travel to Pamplona, to take part in the Mixed Ability Rugby World Cup. The teams are made up of people both with and without disabilities, but who otherwise might never get a chance to play rugby. It promotes the core values of the game, and is emphatically not a disability sport. It is open to anyone who wants to play, and is played on a full sized pitch, with full contact, and a recommended 50:50 split of disabled and non-disabled players. It’s plain to see how belonging to a team is vital to the people who we get to know over the course of this charming and heart-warming documentary. As one of their mothers says in the film, ‘with the right people in the right place, everybody has potential’. Oisin Misteil’s skilfully made film is a lesson in how, given determination, and the right support anyone can become the person they aspire to be, despite very real obstacles being put in their way.
Time Machine Maidan
Time Machine Maidan by Roman Liubyi Volodymyr
In Ukraine in late 2013, the Kremlin-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych was facing nightly demonstrations and civil unrest, centred around Maidan Square in Kyiv. Weeks later he had fled to Russia, and a new regime installed. This began a chain of events which led to the situation that these two countries are in today. Time Machine Maidan is a haunting and often etherial film which takes the audience on a time leap from today’s battlefields in Ukraine to the battlements of the protest and back to those chaotic and febrile times.
First person footage of protest puts us a the heart of what was actually happening to both police and protestors, and the film uses this in a way that doesn’t shy way from depicting scenes of violence and injury to both sides. The narrative takes us on a quest to find a lost friend amongst the crowds, mixing memory with reality, drifting between different time periods and events, but always returning to the night-time streets and the protests, showing the passion for change which drives them all on. From our perspective, knowing what the people of Kyiv would be facing 12 years later, the film almost encourages us to call out to the protesters and tell them where their actions are leading. But would they have acted differently if they knew? Would a time machine be of any practical use?
The film offers no solutions to any of the questions it poses, but with skilful compiling of archive footage, we’re invited to reflect on the haunting events of 2013 knowing what we know today.
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