Will This Fairytale Ever End?
As the controversy over the documentary about poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Fairytale Of Kathmandu, heads for the courts we have to ask: can there really be any winner in this grisly saga?
Dermod Moore, 25 Aug 2010
My heart sank when I read this week that the Fairytale Of Kathmandu saga has life in it yet.
According to the Donegal Democrat, papers have been lodged in the High Court by Neasa Ní Chianáin against RTÉ and Paddy Bushe, claiming that she has been defamed in a film that Bushe made about the making of her controversial documentary, Fairytale of Kathmandu, about Cathal Ó Searcaigh’s life in Nepal. He went back to Kathmandu, interviewed some of the people that had originally featured in it, who were highly critical of Ní Chianáin, and extracts of it were shown on TG4.
When litigation starts, on a topic that is as divisive and complex as this, my first reaction, as a commentator on the scandal, and as someone who interviewed Ó Searcaigh in these pages, is to run to the hills, say nothing, and observe the tsunami wreak havoc on the plains below. When someone is willing to sue, it silences criticism. Paddy Bushe can say nothing to the press now, except to confirm to me that a “monkish silence” is necessary on his part from now on. Whatever interest I may have had in listening to Ní Chianáin’s side of the story, and finally getting to calmly put to her all the questions I’ve stored up since I was so outraged by (what I perceived as) her film’s bias, has disappeared. Once an interpersonal struggle reaches the courts, especially one as fraught as the broken friendship between Ní Chianáin and Ó Searcaigh, it becomes sharply, acidly polarized. Fuzzy, complex ambiguity, the stuff of life, has a hard time being acknowledged. Everyone has to take sides, like children in a messy divorce.
I am not even going to begin to speculate as to the likely costs Neasa Ní Chianáin and Paddy Bushe, a poet and an amateur film-maker, are going to have to cover somehow between them. But in order to establish the truth about this case, one has to go back to the original film, and establish what exactly happened in Kathmandu. Thus, I cannot see how an Irish court could succeed in enabling justice to be done without either decamping to Kathmandu for a sitting, or hiring a charter flight and bringing all the Nepalese witnesses over to Ireland. Either way, none could be compelled to give evidence; it’s a civil case, not a criminal one. So will it be down to looking at the programmes again and trying to make some kind of judgement based on that flimsy evidence?
Page 1/3 <Previous 1 2 3 Next>
©Hot Press 2011. Why be a member? | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy