Phoenix Films’ new four-part series on the Burren is a visually stunning journey through the seasons in this extraordinary place in the company of the people who have protected and cherished their heritage for over 6,000 years and ensured that its uniqueness survives and thrives.
Recognised throughout the world for its austere beauty, the Burren is a living landscape like no other and the series is a creative exploration of the life of this singular place, its people and how each season brings new surprises that delight and amaze all who encounter them.
This series was a very personal project for the director, Martina Durac, as her father hailed from Clare and she spent many childhood holidays roaming around all the places that now feature in these programmes. The series was shot by Paddy Jordan and edited by Genevieve Murphy. The show also features original music from a variety of musicians including Eoin O’Neill, Jon O’Connell, Adam Shapiro, and Dermot Byrne.
Throughout the series they explore this unique landscape with its custodians, the community of local Burren people and those visitors who came for a while and ended up living here, somehow drawn by its indefinable magic. People like Inagh woman Sinéad Ní Gharbhaith who runs The Cheese Press In Ennistymon; her twin sister Roisín who works as a greens school officer and botanist; instrument maker Eugene Lambe who came from Dublin many years ago and now lives just outside Kinvara making uilleann pipes and flutes; farmers Annie Nolan and Pat Nagle; and fisherman Rainer Krause who arrived from Germany over fifty years ago and made his life in Ireland.
The show also spent time with teacher Pádraig O‘Máirtín and his American wife Nóra, an artist, who are raising their four children on the edge of the Burren. They bring us on a journey through the seasons and their lives over a period of one year, as spring moves into summer and then on through autumn and winter and back to spring again. The circle of life unfolds.
This series is a journey through the seasons in the Burren, where each part of the year brings different and surprising life and growth. Moving through the landscape in spring, summer, autumn and winter, each episode captures what makes it distinctive, in a series full of visual wonder, revelling in the sights and sounds that embody the spirit, nature and inhabitants of this special place. The people who are the guardians of the Burren are the guides along the way, offering their insights and local wisdom to give the series its human, celebratory dimension.
