Day Trip (In Memory of Mary Butters)

Film Premiere: 11 May, 8:15 pm.
Subsequently the film will be shown every hour on the hour at Crescent Arts Centre from 2:00 - 5:00 pm except on the following dates:
Fri 19 May, 2:00 - 3:00 pm &
Sat 20 May, 10:00 - 3:00 pm.

Working with director Dawn Richardson, artist Jonathan Brennan and the NI Digital Film Archive, writer Paul Doran has developed a specially-commissioned script for NI Mental Health Arts Festival about the ways in which myths are created and how they live alongside those who experience and remember their stories.
Daytrip (In Memory of Mary Butters) looks at how myths are created and what they can tell us about the way our minds work.

We follow a group of people remembering a trauma from their childhood. They have revisited it many times. At first apart, then together as a story, turning the events forwards and backwards across the years until they have formed a mystic ritual that connects them with deeper, older scars.

The connections between lived mental health challenges, half-remembered stories and the intangibles of intergenerational trauma forms the backbone of the story. Echoing the wider experience of the Northern Irish Troubles and how its many traumas are remembered, retold and processed.

The film is an artistic and poetic treatment of archive material and original footage that brings modern folklore together with locations that have a much older significance. The piece explores ideas such as psychogeography and hauntology, and how these are reflected in Northern Ireland’s more recent history.
This has been achieved through collaborations with the recipients of NI Mental Health Arts Festival’s Artist Residency – EG Dunne, Brian Coney and Ben Harris – over four days in the Sperrins, County Tyrone. Also by working with culture bearers the Armagh Rhymers and through critical research of the resources managed by NI Digital Film Archive.

The film is narrated by BBC Radio Ulster’s Steven Edward Rainey and features a soundtrack from the archives of Belfast-based record label Touch Sensitive Records. Paul Doran is NIMHAF Artist in Residence throughout the festival 11th-21st May 2023

Paul Doran (1985) is a writer from North Belfast.
Doran has published short fiction in Honest Ulsterman, Lagan Online and was shortlisted for the Listowel – Los Gatos Short Story Prize.
On the strength of his contribution to the NI Mental Health Arts Festival’s 2022 publication Gather he was awarded Artist in Residence for the festival in 2023.
Doran was a founding editor and contributor to The Bear: an online zine about books that also covered everything from poisonous evangelical comic books to gloriously trashy cinema. He co-wrote the play Horrible Noise about Lester Bangs and is currently collaborating on two films.
He lives in Belfast.

Dawn Richardson (1985) is an artist and director from the Moy Co Tyrone.
Dawn Richardson has been the Creative Director of NIMHAF for four years, growing the festival into what it is today, with the belief that the arts can affect societal change.
Founder of participatory arts organisations, including Ireland’s first feminist-led LGBT*+ venue and arts studios ‘The 343’ and the first mental health specific exhibition space in NI ‘Take Up Space’. Richardson is the owner of one of Ireland’s most successful independent art gallery’s ‘Framewerk’ in Belfast.
An artist in her own right, often multidisciplinary in nature, Richardson’s work spans social commentary, disruptive collaborative practice, cognitive dissonance and deviant plagiarism. Her work is held in private and public collections worldwide.
Her influences include the postmodern idea of the self, class war and her Mother.
She lives in Belfast.
“Richardson has emerged as a vital cultural instigator, whose artistic labour encapsulates a grassroots political conviction, through her often publicly engaged work” – John Hamill.

Jonathan Brennan (1978) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Belfast (since 2012). Originally from Dublin, he spent eight years in Brussels, Belgium where he studied painting at the École des Arts d’Anderlecht.
Brennan works with various media such as printmaking, drawing, painting, video, photography, text, sound and installation.
He is drawn to nature and landscape as subject matter and is fascinated how urban and rural rub against each other in our cities. Current interests include capturing the sense/feeling of places through a combination of painting, printmaking, 3d laser-scanning, audio and narrative, based on the notion that no individual form of representation can convey this completely on its own.
Jonathan has exhibited solo and in group shows in Belfast and internationally. His most recent solo show took place at Vault Artist Studios Belfast in October 2022.

Made possible by the support of Film Hub NI, part of the BFI Film Audience Network, awarding funds from National Lottery; The Baring Foundation; Northern Ireland Screen Digital Film Archive; and Mental Health Foundation.