Northern Ireland Screen's Digital Film Archive is a free public access resource for teachers, students, historians and anyone who has an interest in moving images. Spanning from 1897 to the present day, the films in the Digital Film Archive cover all aspects of life in Northern Ireland and includes everything from dramas to documentaries, newsreels and features, animation to amateur footage.
This film is part of Free
Stigmata
A man loses everything he has day-dreaming his way through life
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Overview
Adam Darius plays an impoverished traveller making his way through an Irish and inner landscape. Against this background he re-enacts stages of his past life and comes to see himself as a kind of harlequin Christ figure. But will he find that the sufferings of the world fall on his own shoulders accordingly? Immerse yourself in his expressive gestures as you follow the ecstasies and agonies of his journey set to Stellan Benson’s electronic sound track.
Anthony Keane with Adam Darius developed this scenario without words. If you find Kate Bush pops into your mind during this film that might be because she used the sizable advance for her first record from EMI to train in mime with Adam Darius. Expressive mime is certainly an unusual spectacle in this landscape however it is part of a rich on-going tradition of experimental performance occupying public space through art and theatre in Northern Ireland. Darius’s topless dancing may have passed without controversy when filmed in 1968 however in 2011 Alan Graham, farmer and county Down DUP councillor, put a stop to pop star Rihanna filming her music video in his barley field when he saw her dancing topless.
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