‘The image of that little cottage, my grandparents used to run a textile business out of there, they used to do the markets. So that image is really important to me’ the filmmaker David McDonagh tells me in reference to the opening shot of his short documentary Being Put Back Together, which won best film in its category at this year’s Galway Film Fleadh and has been long listed for an Academy Award.
‘To think’ David says, ‘it’s on the list right now with the future winner.’ It could be the future winner, I tell him. He shakes his head, ‘I doubt it.’ His modesty is not feigned. Before the film’s screening at the Fleadh he worried that audiences ‘would say that’s a load of crap and walk out.’ To his surprise, people were moved to both laughter and tears during the film’s eleven minutes, a portrait of his brother Kaylen as he explores photography in an effort to improve his mental health.
Images have always been important to David. A self-taught photographer, he bought his first camera on Adverts.ie and watched YouTube videos to learn more about the craft. It was a year or so before he plucked up the courage to show anybody his images. Art-making is a vulnerable territory, but David’s decision was born of necessity. ‘I was working an 84 hour week at the University Hospital’s A&E Department’, he tells me, ‘so I was beat up’. Street photography provided him with the respite he needed.
‘I remember the first day I went around Galway city taking photographs. I felt so much innocence, like a child. It made me even more sensitive to the world around me.’
It was David’s positive experience that prompted him to encourage his brother Kaylen, who was struggling with mental health issues, to take up photography.
Night walks
‘I’d be up at night, watching movies in the sitting room and Kaylen would come out and he’d say ‘things aren’t good,’ so I’d say ‘get your camera out, we’ll go for a walk.’ We’d walk around the town at three or four o’clock in the morning taking photographs.’
David, whose first short documentary Dreamers also deals with mental health and features musician Kathleen Keenan, grappled with the ethics of making a film about Kaylen when he was in such a fragile state. ‘I was in a weird place because I was trying to make a film and become a filmmaker, while Kaylen’s life was spiralling out of control.’
When Kaylen spoke of suicide, David knew that he had to do something. The film, which took a year to make, gave Kaylen a focus, allowing him to explore photography within the context of a larger creative project. It also gave him the opportunity to help others in his situation. ‘He thought if somebody else saw it that was in a similar situation to him, it might help,’ David says.
Art’s therapeutic quality is a strong theme in the film, but it is also its potential to connect people that draws David to it. When I ask David about his background as a settled member of the Traveller community, he tells me ‘being a Traveller is a tiny part of what I am, but it’s a huge part of what I am for other people. Being Irish is a way bigger part and all Travellers feel that way.’
Suicide rate seven times higher
In 2020 the All-Ireland Traveller Health Study found that the suicide rate within the Traveller community is 6-7 higher than in the general population. I ask David to what extent he thinks discrimination plays a role. ‘The conversation with discrimination and racism is really difficult to have because people become defensive.’ This, he says, is where art comes in.
‘There were people in my life growing up, that when I would walk the street and I would say ‘hello,’ they wouldn’t answer me, they would cross the street before I got to them. I don’t know why, but they didn’t want to be on the same side of the street as me. When I started sharing my images, they were the people who approached me and said ‘hello, you’re the guy who takes pictures’.’
David says you can respond in two ways in this situation, you can become bitter or you can see it as a positive thing. He chooses the latter. ‘Art eradicates ignorance,’ he continues, ‘there’s something about art that does what conversation can’t. When you show someone a film, or you show them a piece of art, it penetrates differently. They have a shift in consciousness.’
As David mentions, being a Traveller is only an aspect of who he is. As a filmmaker he aspires to make work that is important to his wider community. ‘I don’t live in this tiny little vacuum where I’m just obsessed with Traveller issues. Mental health is important to me.’
Being Put Back Together clearly highlights the importance of men expressing and sharing mental health difficulties. ‘I think as men we don’t always deal with our mental health in constructive ways, we bottle it up or turn to things like alcohol or narcotics, but at some point it spills out and we have to deal with it. To articulate those emotions in a piece of art is as powerful a way of dealing with it as I can imagine.’
Despite the film’s sensitive subject matter, there are moments that the viewer can’t help but laugh. The chemistry between these two brothers is palpable. ‘Get my good side,’ Kaylen commands David during one scene, ‘all my sides are good!’. Off-camera David lets out a heavy sigh. ‘Come on, will ya take it seriously, will ya?’.
‘He got a great laugh out of the film,’ David says, and that, he continues, is the beauty of being Irish - we see the levity in even the darkest situations. ‘If you don’t laugh, you cry.’ What the film points to is the importance of both. There is always the possibility to turn our feelings into something new.
‘They’re all Kaylen’s images,’ David says of a series of photographs shown at the end of the film: graffiti on an abandoned train station wall in Tuam; a statue of the Virgin Mary at St. Brigid’s Well; the cottage that belonged to their grandparents. These are the images that express some of Kaylen and David’s inner world’s. David is right, it is hard, when presented with these photographs, to feel anything but a deep sense of connection to the subject and their captor.
Ultimately the outcome David wanted from the film, he got, ‘and that was for (his ) brother to be in a better place.’ The fact that the film won Best Short Documentary at the Film Fleadh and has been long-listed in the same category for an Academy Award are very happy bonuses.
David is currently working on two new projects, a short documentary commissioned by the Town Hall Theatre in Galway, as well as his first feature. It is clear that David’s best years are ahead of him. After two such empathic debuts, audiences can only expect him to go from strength to strength. His clear humility and compassion are sure to carry him.
