Tell Them Our Names Film Screening and Post-Screening Talk
Watch Tell Them Our Names, a film directed by Mary Moynihan, via live stream on Friday 3 April, 7.30pm, followed by discussion with special guests Clodagh Finn, author of A Time to Risk All.
Art Connects – At Home with Smashing Times
Watch Tell Them Our Names, a film directed by Mary Moynihan, via live stream on Friday 3 April, 7.30pm, followed by discussion with special guests Clodagh Finn, author of A Time to Risk All, the incredible untold story of Mary Elmes, the Irish woman who saved children from Nazi concentration camps and Mary Moynihan, writer, theatre and film-maker and Artistic Director, Smashing Times. Our theme is women’s stories of WWII with a focus on inspiring stories of women handling adversity in difficult times in the past and today.
Tell Them Our Names film screening and post-screening talk
When: Friday 3 April, 7.30pm.
Where: Smashing Times Online Centre for the Arts and Equality click. Click here to join live event.
Email your questions and comments to productions@smashingtimes.ie
Part of a new Smashing Times online series of curated arts content, newsletters and online events including creative art showcases every Friday in April, on the 3, 10, and 17 April 2020 at 7.30pm. www.smashingtimes.ie
Tell Them Our Names, a film by Mary Moynihan
Smashing Times Theatre and Film Company and High Wire Ltd
Selected for the Kerry Film Festival and London Eye International Film Festival
Opening on an anonymous beach in Europe, a group of women and children line up in front of a bureaucrat’s desk, only to be barked at by a gatekeeper. But the women are not silent. They are here for a reason. An unexpected act of violence is carried out, as the women become authors of their own stories. Tell Them Our Names is an imagined re-creation of moments from the lives of five powerful women during WWII recalling moments of bravery, sacrifice and love amidst the horror of war, as women stood up against Fascism and totalitarianism and refused to accept oppression.
Director: Mary Moynihan
Producer: Freda Manweiler
Production Company: Smashing Times and High Wire
Script: Paul Kennedy, Mary Moynihan, Fiona Bawn Thompson from a devising process with the cast
Cast: Fiona Bawn Thompson, Margaret Toomey, Raymond Keane, Romana Testasecca, Ella Brady and Mary Moynihan.
Editor: Mark Quinn
Lighting Camera: Ken O’Mahony, Matt Kirrane
Tell Them Our Names is a short art film directed by Mary Moynihan, Smashing Times Theatre and Film Company starring Fiona Bawn Thompson, Margaret Toomey, Raymond Keane, Romana Testasecca, Ella Brady and Mary Moynihan. The film was screened at the London Eye International Film Festival, the Kerry Film Festival and as part of proceedings for Café Europa presented at Leif Theatre, Scotland. The film is scripted by Paul Kennedy, Mary Moynihan and Fiona Bawn Thompson from a devising process with the cast, the editor is Mark Quinn, the Lighting Camera people are Ken O’Mahony and Matt Kirrane, and the film is produced by Smashing Times Theatre and Film Company in association with High Wire Ltd.
Tell Them Our Names was created as part of Women War and Peace, a European transnational project co-funded by the Europe for Citizens programme of the European Union and implemented by four partner organisations from Ireland, Spain, Germany and Poland. The partner organisations are: Smashing Times Theatre Company, Ireland, www.smashingtimes.ie; Institute de Formacion Y Estudios Sociales (IFES), Valencia, Spain, www.ifes.es; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universitaet, Hannover, Germany, www.uni-hannover.de; and University of Humanities and Economics in Lodz, Poland, www.ahe.lodz.pl.
The Story Continues . .
When Irish journalist and writer Clodagh Finn saw a performance of The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII presented by Smashing Times Theatre and Film Company in 2016, she was so moved by the evocative portrayal of Mary Elmes that she set about piecing together the real-life story of how this courageous Cork woman saved hundreds of lives in Franco’s Spain and Nazi-occupied France.
Clodagh trawled archives in Paris, London and the US and managed to track down several of the refugees that Mary saved as children. She tells the story in a biography, A Time to Risk All, the incredible untold story of Mary Elmes, the Irish woman who saved children from Nazi Concentration Camps, now published by Gill Books.
Mary Elmes might not be a name that many people know, but in A Time to Risk All the extent of the momentous work that she did is brought to light. Elmes was born in Cork at the beginning of the 20th Century and travelled to Europe in the 1930s to help war-torn refugees. In 1942, when it became evident that Jews were being deported to their death, she risked her life smuggling children to safety in the boot of her car and succeeded in getting a number of adults off convoys bound for Nazi death camps. She was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo on suspicion of espionage and hostility against Germany. But when the war was over, she married and settled down, never speaking about what she had done. Her story was forgotten.
Clodagh Finn has travelled throughout Europe and Ireland to piece together the story of this brave, unknown Irish woman, meeting with many of those Mary Elmes saved as children. Here, in a book packed with courage, heroism, adventure and tragedy, her story finally comes to light and she is remembered as she deserves.
Guest Speakers for 3 April 2020
Clodagh Finn
Clodagh Finn has been writing and editing for over 25 years. She spent 10 years at the Irish Examiner before studying at the European School of Journalism in Paris and working there as a freelance writer and editor. She later worked for the Sunday Independent and Irish Independent for 13 years, most recently as production editor of Weekend Magazine. She currently works as a freelance feature writer, editor and trainer, and writes a weekly column for the Irish Examiner. Her 2017 book, A Time to Risk All, details the incredible untold story of Mary Elmes, the Irish woman who saved children from Nazi Concentration Camps. It received critical acclaim and was a bestseller in Ireland. Clodagh’s latest book is Through Her Eyes: A New History of Ireland in 21 Women. Told through the prism of the lives of 21 extraordinary women, this remarkable book offers an alternative vision of Irish history – one that puts the spotlight on women whose contributions have been forgotten or overlooked.
Mary Moynihan
Mary Moynihan, MA, is a writer, theatre and film-maker, and Artistic Director of the Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality, using the arts to promote human rights, climate justice and gender equality. The centre incorporates Smashing Times Theatre and Film Company and Smashing Times Youth Arts Ensemble. Mary is a Theatre Lecturer at TU Dublin Conservatoire of Music and Drama. Mary specialises in professional film and theatre practice and in using the arts, new digital technologies and historical memory to promote human rights, peace, gender equality and positive mental health and well-being. Mary develops cutting edge, arts-based programmes with a range of organisations at local, national and international levels and her work is underpinned by a rights-based approach and a commitment to artistic excellence and social engagement.