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The Fugitive (1910)
Written by John MacDonagh, who fought in 1916 Rising
The writer of this film was John MacDonagh, who fought under the command of his brother Thomas MacDonagh, signatory of the Proclamation of Independence and one of the seven leaders, in the 1916 Rising in Ireland. MacDonagh made other films - most famous today is his film of Michael Collins selling the first bonds of the Dail Loan to a succession of national figures including Grace Plunkett (MacDonagh's sister-in-law; her sister Muriel (née Gifford) was married to Thomas MacDonagh), and his brother Joseph, who would die on hunger strike on Christmas Day 1922. John MacDonagh went on to write several films - The Casey Millions, Wicklow Gold, Willie O'Reilly and His Colleen Bawn - and to be an entrepreneurial manager of the Queen's Theatre in Dublin, before joining 2RN, later RTE, the Irish national radio and television station, where he worked until retirement in 1947.
Machair (1993)
Gripping soap set on a remote Scottish island
'The machair always calls you home' - the proverb quoted by the characters in Machair.
Machair is the typical short grass full of harebells and cowslips that grows at the edge of the sea on the islands bordering the Atlantic west of Europe.
Here, 'An Fear Mor' (the great man) who founded the Gaelic college on the island has died, leaving a will that bequeaths his estate to his legitimate son, a London-born man with no love for Gaelic or Scotland.
It is widely thought that the trusty assistant of An Fear Mor, a man with a strange resemblance to this son, is also a son; it shocks the islanders when they hear of the will, as it was expected that he would leave his acres, his money and his problems to this man, who has been his faithful helper since childhood.
The stage is set for conflict - and in an island full of secrets, this is just the start. There's the returned teacher with his city wife - who doesn't realise that it's a sin to hang out washing on the Sabbath. There's the helpless attraction between this teacher and a young woman... And there's the teacher's old mother, who has the second sight, and foretells events through double-speak.
Every character is related to every other in half a dozen ways; there's a claustrophobic sense of secrets concealed by lies and sometimes by truth; revelations unreel one after another as reality writhes and changes - and all set against the beauty of the wild landscape.
The Gaelic is startlingly like Connemara Irish - Teilifis na Gaeilge, now TG4, showed this with subtitles in its early days and the subtitles were often less understandable than the original. The acting is top class, and the writing brilliant - terse, incisive and imbued with the poetry of its native language.