Director: Tony Donoghue
Year of Completion: 2012
TRT: 9 mins
Country of Filming/Origin: Ireland
An stunningly animated documentary about repair and recycling abandoned folk furniture in an Irish village
“A strikingly beautiful stop motion animation exploring a local craftsman’s restoration of rural furniture in a small Irish community. Experimenting with the vivid expression of folklore storytelling, artifacts of bygone days are transformed from decaying neglect and brought to life, with playful vivacity.”
“If these walls could talk.” …But what if more than just our walls could tell stories? What if our furniture could not only talk, but had a life of its own? Those steadfast fixtures of the home often carry years of family history, providing us with their service and functionality day after day, while quietly observing us as we move through our lives. They would have plenty to tell.
In Ireland, old hand-painted furniture is often associated with hard times, poverty, and bygone eras that many would rather forget. In this vaunted animated documentary, 16 pieces of traditional folk furniture are repaired and returned home. The short won the prize for Best Animation at the Sundance Film Festival, for its use of stop-motion animation, which breathed life into disregarded pieces of furniture as renovation transforms them from detritus scattered on disused, abandoned barn floors to lively pieces of the homes they once inhabited.