Pavee Lackeen: The Traveller Girl

A documentary-style snapshot of the life of a Traveller family in the docks area of Dublin. (Travellers are the Irish equivalent of Roma gypsies, but those two groups have entirely different histories.) A resilient mother and her ten children occupy trailers, or caravans as the Brits call them, on land owned by the local council. The film primarily follows Winnie, a ten year daughter, but the mother also plays an important role as she fights eviction notices and tries to improve the live of her children. Issues of discrimination, difficulties with the authorities and a social security net that, while well intentioned, can do little for the family are topics that permeate the film. Members of the family and their neighbors play themselves, while actors take up non-Traveller roles. The director should be commended for integrating professionals and non-professionals into a seamless whole.

I worried that Pavee Lakeen would fall at one of two hurdles; either do-gooder worthiness in covering the subject matter, or the hokey staged quality often associated with both 'docu-dramas' and use of non-professional actors. No need to concern yourself on either count.

The fiction/documentary thing works to the degree that you forget you're looking at something that isn't pure documentary. The professional actors don't stick out like sore thumbs, and the feel of the entire film is very naturalistic.

In avoiding the urge to moralise, and investing so much time and effort in capturing the essence of the Maughan's day-to-day life, Perry Ogden has produced a real gem of a film. He managed to produce something that takes the qualities of his social reportage photography work, and extends it naturally into cinema. For a first feature, it exhibits nothing of the excessive tinkering you sometimes find. Ogden was blessed with a photogenic lead, but he avoids leaning on the aesthetic crutch he might have done.

The film isn't big on narrative, and don't go expecting plot resolutions, or arcs, or whatever. It's a great intimate snapshot of a girl's life, a family, and (unexpectedly) a city, in this moment in time. The 'issues' that the film touches on are handled with a light touch, and all the better for it.

One warning; I don't know if the film is shown with subtitles outside Ireland, but the accent/dialect of the Travellers will challenge some.

A slice of life can be great cinema, because it can capture something that seems intrinsically real and tangible. Pavee Lackeen is funny and strikes me as realistic.

The film does not need an insertion of dramatic structure because I think it would then become contrived and false. The structure of the film is loose, but this definitely works. The focus isn't compromised, and as an audience we are compelled not by manufactured structure but by the rawness and reality of 'The Traveller Girl's' life (shaky, unsteady, boring, sad). Winnie and her family shine, a cracker of a film.

I was delighted to have the opportunity to see Pavee Lackeen at Soho and take part in the Q&A session with Perry Ogden afterwards. Even though I can appreciate the artistic aspect of the film and Perry Ogden's intention to highlight certain aspects of lifestyle problems, i.e, housing and education, I cannot understand what he is alluding to when he says that he wants to 'challenge people's perceptions'. Far from challenge, I think Perry has managed to confirm some people's entrenched and negative views of the travelling population. What aspects of the film celebrated the culture? When I put some of my concerns to Perry at the Q&A, he was keen to point out to me that it was not meant to be a 'bleeding heart documentary'...(not that I inferred that, his words, not mine)...and he 'told' me that ...I had to 'understand about the culture'. O.K Perry, so not only do you think you have a license to represent the traveller community ('I understand the language, it's my language now'), you obviously feel you can talk for others. As a professional involved in children's right's, I was concerned about your lack of sensitivity to Winnie and her mother. The boundaries in the film were so blurred, viewers were confused as to what was fact for the family and what was fiction. When a vulnerable 10year old child is brave enough to speak up for herself and ask for something quite specific (Please take out the glue sniffing scene as I am worried about what people may think of me), best case scenario, Perry, it could be seen as ignorance on your part to leave it in, worst case scenario, it could be perceived as abusive. In a world where the media groom and manipulate vulnerability for the purpose of achieving artistic recognition...well done, I'd say that's a 10 out of 10.

Pavee Lackeen: The Traveller Girl revolves around a young, pre-teen girl from Ireland named Winnie who lives in a rather small stationary mobile home with her mother and family beside a large port. Huge lorries carrying large containers and the noise they make are the dominant sound effects to their lives; the areas Winnie journeys to are limited to in and around the general area of a town centre complete with small shops and tacky arcades; the fights she gets into at school and the trips to the head teacher's office afterwards offer brief moments of incident in her life whilst uninspiring conversations over fish and chip dinners in the middle of nowhere about barely anything at all are the highlights of communication with people of her own age group. This is the life of Winnie, this is the life of the lead in Pavee Lackeen: The Traveller Girl; a 2006 Irish film-come-documentary from Perry Ogden about mobile home dwellers with barely anywhere to go and barely anything to look forward to.

The film is an exciting, contemporary neo-realist piece, with apparently real people instead of actors, outlining the damaging effect that this sort of situation might have on the youth. It additionally raises awareness of the supposed state of the people focused on within, highlighting the state's ignoring in providing housing for those that need it. As more and more containers on the backs of lorries roll by, and the emphasis on the bustling import/export links with the wider extent of the world the state have going on becomes more obvious, the more we feel for those domestically that are being ignored of whom really do need the nation's attention. The world in which the film unfolds is low level and dank, one would exclaim it were dangerous but the area in which those that we follow are based is so devoid of action that you'd be hard pressed to even find someone or something that might be a threat.

Despite revolving around young girl Winnie, no specific gaze is established on her behalf thus rendering the film less of how a child might purvey these surroundings and more of a broader; more collective tale of people in this situation. Their existence is placed in stark contrast with a character known as Marie, an estate agent who mingles with Winnie and her family and who it's crucially established: "doesn't live in a trailer anymore". Marie pops up on occasion with some advice on a notice of eviction, but she also maintains in comparison to Winnie's family, a physically superior presence through her clothing; is quite clearly more informed and certainly speaks more affluently, thus representing a physical manifestation of success born out of this existence and sorts of people we're dealing with. There's a slight sense of Winnie able to follow suit being the young, adventurous and seemingly carefree person that she is; something put in stark contrast to her mother.

Winnie's sense of adventure in exploring and getting out and about on a consistent basis is a ray of light compared to her mother, whom she outranks in this department and ability to come across as comprehensible. Slowly but surely, we see a harmless and rather bubbly young girl sink lower and lower when fights at school spill out into the rest of the world in attempts at shoplifting; clear-cut stealing in the taking of coins form a fountain to quench afternoon boredom and the ill-advised wearing of relatively loose clothing as this young tearaway ventures out with a female companion into the darkness of night amidst an admittedly poor area of docklands surroundings and general lower-lever urbanisation. The risks and results are seemingly oblivious to Winnie, whom even when she wishes to listen to music and dance to it, must realise there is no bedroom nor stereo of her own to hideaway in amongst a plateau of privacy.

The film is a series of incidences and scenes in which it appears Winnie is attempting to find herself; to find some kind of identity running parallel to a strand more dedicated to plot, scenario and apparent cause and effect in that the local council enforcers whom have the power to do so wish to move Winnie and the family's mobile home out of the docklands zone. The question as to whether this is good or not for the family hinges on whether they're eligible for council housing. I preferred Winnie's scenes and general segment more, in that her attempting to find her own 'self' sees her hold dresses that she swipes out of large skips housing clothes people have decided to give up for charity up to her body so as to test a friend's opinion on how it looks. On other occasions, she ventures into immigrant owned video stores to quandary about items such as the videos and films as well as a separate hair salon to ask of the hair extensions. This might be seen as a furthering of one's attempt at identity, this time through a physical extension of the body in the manipulation of one's hair decorations to form a personification of some kind.

Perry Ogden has achieved something rather extraordinary, taking a camera and venturing out into the Irish docklands and surrounding area, in the process finding a family; shooting them for what they are; capturing their predicament plus whatever general strife comes their way and managing to inject some sort of brooding sense of tragedy into the proceedings of a young girl's decline in well-being. At one point, a number of Winnie's siblings attempt to sing together within the confines of the mobile home each of them share whilst in-front of Marie the estate agent. They sing badly, that is until a chorus of singing in unison brings them all together: the tune is an old favourite of most in "I Will Survive", something that stands eerily and somewhat falsely in contrast to just about everything else.