The Silver Branch:
A creative feature length documentary
Multi award winning film immerses us in the exquisite textures of the natural world, bringing us a rare glimpse of a disappearing way of life with all its richness and roguery, and leading to a deep connection with the Earth and our ancestral wild spirit, drinking deep at the well of one man’s story, one family’s joy and heartbreak.
THE SILVER BRANCH
Our protagonist Patrick brings us on a journey into the wilderness of the Burren landscape and into the lives of a small community of farmers who live there. The harsh beauty of the landscape has shaped the people that live here… it has taught them universal wisdom, a philosophy of life, a spirituality that gives them an inner strength and a way of simply ‘just being’. Perhaps it is time we listened to them again?
FINDING YOUR INNER WARRIOR
When Patrick and his friends are about to lose everything, their houses, their land and their friends, Patrick knows he has to reach for his inner warrior which is buried deep inside him to give him the courage to battle on.
The development of that inner warrior is the resilience you require to go through life. It’s the resilience that makes you stand up and not be afraid to walk the path. It’s important to walk the path and to not be afraid. Sure we’re all afraid but there’s an objective there and we have to reach for it.
Patrick found that out at 18 years of age at the National Boxing Stadium.
ECHO OF THE ANCESTORS
To Patrick, the rocks, the stones, the rivers, the old burial cairns at the side of the cliff that are 6-7,000years old all hold memory. They are the echo of the ancestors.
There are places, special places in the Burren where the veil between our world and the people who went before us is very thin and Patrick can feel the echoing from the ancestors coming to him.
The human story is an incredible story, but we are not the only story, what we do and say echoes to the next generation.
HONOR THOSE FIELDS
Patrick feels we live in the age of dollars, litres and pence…. But for him and his grandparents they did work out of routine, not necessarily for any monetary value. Building and repairing the old stone walls that crisscross the Burren, was done out of routine and out of respect, because it honours the people who sweated making those walls hundreds or even thousands of years before.
GRIEF WITHIN BEAUTY
When Patrick sows tiny carrot seeds in the Spring-time and then sees them coming in the Summer, it gives him an amazing sense of wonder. The sap rises, the shells open and in a way everything starts singing the music of what happens. The wonder of it is so incredible, the wonder of spring, summer and autumn.
At a deeper level Patrick feels an inner grief. He’s not sure where it comes from but there is an incredible grief within that beauty.
On the foxes back
Storytelling is the oldest form of teaching. It bonded the early human communities, giving children the answers to the biggest questions of creation, life, and the afterlife. Stories define us, shape us, control us, and make us. Not every human culture in the world is literate, but every single culture tells stories.