Private Project

A Line Was Drawn

A Line Was Drawn weaves together material from a number of
different sources including animated sequences, television and film archives, and two distinct voiceover narrations. The work
explores issues of how our world is structured through the creation of borders and boundaries limiting movement, thinking, questioning and agency. An integral part of the maintaining of these delineations is the control over the narratives around them. This film meditates on the need of an individual to have their voice heard in the midst of rules of storytelling and dominant historical narratives. Underlying this is the relationship between human body and land, the body of land and the sea, the body of language and its separate words, the performer and her actions, the bodies that make the film and the politics that erects partitions for the purposes of control. Footage for the film was shot on the Outer Hebrides while working on a solo show at Taigh Chearsabagh, Lochmaddy, North Uist in 2018.

  • Mairéad McClean
    Director
    Making Her Mark (2018), No More (2014)
  • The Wapping Project
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    13 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 7, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Ireland
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    super8, digital video,
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • BFI London Film Festival
    London
    United Kingdom
    October 6, 2019
    World
    Official Selection
  • Revolution Per Minute Film Festival
    Boston
    United States
    February 2, 2020
    American Premiere
    Official Selection
  • CineAutopsia
    Bogota
    Colombia
    June 30, 2020
    Latin American Premier
    Official Selection
  • Docs Ireland
    Belfast- Dublin
    Ireland
    November 5, 2020
    Irish Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Monitor 14 @ SAVAC
    Toronto
    Canada
    August 6, 2021
    North American Premiere
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Mairéad McClean

Mairéad McClean works across film, video, sound and photography using material from a diverse range of sources. Found footage, historical and family archives, filmed performances and televisual media, appear in many of her single screen films and multi-media installations produced over the past 25 years. Her practice investigates how specific historical events, as presented in the public domain, differ from those remembered through actual experience. This perspective allows for close reading of what is being remembered, how it is remembered, why it is being remembered and by whom. Her most recent solo show Making Her Mark (2018) at Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre, Scotland, was commissioned by The Wapping Project, London. The exhibition was an installation of pieces deploying new approaches, methods and ways of working including a collaboration with a dance artist to create a performance piece forming the core of the main film and working with a larger team in both production and post-production. McClean has received a number of awards for her work both in the UK and Ireland.  Her piece No More (2013) exploring questions around the introduction of internment without trial in Northern Ireland in 1971 won the inaugural MAC International Art Prize in 2014 and was exhibited at the MAC Belfast that year. No More was acquired for the National Collection of Ireland by The Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2017. Other notable recent exhibitions and screenings include CCA Glasgow (2015), Whitechapel Gallery, London, (2016), The Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival: Faces of Conflict, Pittsburgh, USA, (2016), The Now & After Exhibition, Video Art Festival and Exhibition, Fabrika, Moscow (2017) and Solas Nua, Washington DC, USA (2019).

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