Eclipse Pictures, run by WFT Vice Chair Siobhán Farrell and WFT member Claire Dunlop, are releasing the award-winning film about sheep farmer and artist Orla Barry, Notes From Sheepland. The documentary is directed by WFT member Cara Holmes and opens in cinemas today, 26th July.
LOGLINE
NOTES FROM SHEEPLAND bursts with candid observations of lipstick wearing, always swearing, no nonsense, artist and shepherd, Orla Barry. Through her fields, her digital diaries, and the pedigree sheep she cares for, we discover how the art is in the doing.
SYNOPSIS
Orla Barry is a self-confessed ovine addict. She is a decade in sheep, she’s still wondering what possessed her to start but yet she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Orla lived in Brussels for 16 years and now lives and works in South East Ireland where she runs a flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep. Her work deals with the tensions of being an artist and an eco-farmer in rural Ireland. The Sheep have slowed her art career but at the same, caring for them has hugely inspired it. She escapes the studio by going to the sheep, escapes the sheep by hiding in her studio. NOTES FROM SHEEPLAND follows Orla, an outlier, as she floats between these worlds. It reflects upon the primal, poetic and unpredictable bond she has with the natural world.
You can watch the trailer for NOTES FROM SHEEPLAND here.
DIRECTOR: Cara Holmes
WRITER + NARRATOR: Orla Barry
A Reel Art Film funded by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon
AWARDS
Best Documentary, Dublin International Film Festival
Pull Focus Award for Best New Irish Feature Documentary, Docs Ireland
About Director CARA HOLMES
Cara Holmes, a multifaceted queer activist, musician, and filmmaker.
Her artistic journey spans diverse arenas, including playing in queer
and feminist post-punk bands, touring extensively across Ireland, the
UK, Germany, Poland, and Lithuania. As a film editor and director,
Cara’s prowess shines through her acclaimed works. Notably, she
directed the IFTA-winning film Welcome To A Bright White Limbo
(receiving a Special Jury mention at the Tribeca film festival in 2020
and screened at HotDocs, Sheffield Doc/Fest, and Aesthetica) Cara’s
debut feature documentary, Notes From Sheepland, premiered
internationally at the Telluride Film Festival in 2023, garnering
accolades like Best Documentary at the Dublin International Film
Festival 2023 and the Pull Focus Best Irish Feature Documentary at
Docs Ireland 2023. Notes from Sheepland was also nominated for
an IFTA in 2024.
Cara’s editing credits include the feature documentaries, Housewife of
The Year, Piano Dreams, Father of the Cyborgs and Lost in France. She
has worked with Screen Ireland ,TG4, RTÉ, BBC and the Arts Council of
Ireland to create works that expand the form of documentary
storytelling in Ireland.
About Writer + Narrator ORLA BARRY
Orla Barry is both visual artist and shepherd. She lives and works on
the south coast rural Wexford where she runs a successful pedigree
Lleyn sheep flock alongside her art practice. Barry writes, makes
performances, video and sound installations. Her work focuses on
language, both written and spoken, as well as its visual deconstruction
and displacement. Fiction, auto-ethnography and oral history are
blended to reflect on the culture of our disconnection from the
countryside and the boundaries of art and the rural everyday.
Barry plays with the fractured relationship between agriculture,
gender and the natural world. But her work also deals with the
materiality of words and approaches to writing and speaking to
accentuate this physical and embodied understanding of language as
visual form.
She also recently took part in group exhibitions at The 40th EVA
International, Limerick, Ireland (2023, 2021) and A Growing Enquiry –
Art & Agriculture, Reconciling Values, RHA Gallery, Dublin (2022).
Barry was an advising researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Post Academie
for Art Design and Reflection (2004-2010) and is a lecturer at SETU.
Notes From Sheepland opens in cinemas from 26 July:
- IFI
- Light House
- Pálás Cinema Galway
- Triskel Cork (from 28 July)
- QFT Belfast (from 2 Aug)
Q&A screenings:
- 26 July – IFI Q&A with Orla Barry and director Cara Holmes, hosted by Selina Guinness, post 6.30pm screening
- 31 July – Arc Wexford Q&A with Orla Barry and director Cara Holmes, hosted by Wexford Arts Officer, Liz Burns, post 8.15pm screening
