Anchor and Odyssey: Driven to Wander (2023) excerpt

Screenings and Awards

2024: Official Selection, Cine Paris Film Festival, Paris, France. 

2024: Honorable Mention, Experimental Forum, Los Angeles, U.S.A.

2023: Best Experimental Film, White Deer International Film Festival, U.K.

2023: Official Selection, Aphrodite Film Awards, New York.

2023:  Official Selection, 17th Venice International Art Fair, Italy.

Synopsis

Anchor and Odyssey: Driven to Wander is a film about home. It was largely filmed during lockdown (2020-2022) at Sandymount Strand, Dublin - a seashore within 5 km from my home and the travel restrictions of the time due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Drawn to the infinite distance of its horizon, this strand became a place I regularly returned to, as I grappled with the need for security and adventure. Embracing this contradiction, the film juxtaposes the repetition of movement and place against the epic tale of adventure in Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus' years of wandering and his quest to return home took on new meaning during lockdown and the inability to leave or return home for many people. 

The film's form is informed by the structure of The Odyssey - a sequence of 24 one-minute episodes that align with the books' 24 chapters. In reference to Joyce's Ulysses, also inspired by The Odyssey, the film follows the span of a day, starting at 8am when Ulysses begins, and ending at 7am the following morning, as lockdown lifts and 'the feud is ended'. Each of the film's episodes weave multiple narratives of the personal, political and imaginative - coming in and out of focus using the Greek tradition of sound, voice and chorus.