’Celtic Utopia’ Irish Folk Music Documentary Film: Locarno Interview

You may think you know Irish, but have you ever listened to the new wave of Irish folk music? If your answer is no, Celtic Utopia (Útóipe Cheilteach) can help you out. The documentary from the Stockholm-based duo of Irish filmmaker Dennis Harvey (I Must Away) and Sweden’s Lars Lovén (the Neneh Cherry-narrated Fonko), which world premieres in the Critics’ Week (Semaine de la Critique), an independent section created by the Swiss Association of Film Journalists in partnership with the Locarno Film Festival, on Aug. 11.

It tells “the story of a new Ireland and its vibrant music scene, but also that of a postcolonial society wrestling with its heritage,” notes a synopsis. “A society where folk music carries both the oppression of the past and the dream of a bright future.”

The doc takes audiences on a ballad tour through the Irish folk music renaissance courtesy of the likes of The Mary Wallopers, Negro Impacto, Chi-chi Enyoazu, The Deadlians, Jinx Lennon, Poor Creature, Naoise Mac Cathmhaoil, Rising Damp, Young Spencer, Susan Hughes, and Post Punk Podge, among others, who are “telling stories and singing songs to try to understand their past and to heal their colonial wounds.” You can even hear a group of musicians talk about making music “to scare priests and politicians.”

The cinematography for the film, produced by MDEMC, was handled by Tuva Björk and Jamie Goldrick.

Before the film’s premiere in the picturesque Swiss lakeside town of Locarno, Lovén and Harvey talked to THR about the inspiration for the doc, the musical and political journey it takes audiences on, and why its artists are pitch perfect for our times.

“Lars made this amazing film called Fonko about this interesting time in African urban music, where in lots of different African cities young people were using different old forms of music to sort of reflect the interesting political times,” Harvey tells THR. “I loved that film, and we were chatting about Ireland. And then we were like, ‘Whoa, what you did with Fonko is sort of happening in Ireland right now. It’s an amazing time for music and politics, youth-led politics, and a time of potential progressive change.”

That was around 2019. “Ireland had had the marriage equality referendum in 2015 and then in 2018, there was the abortion rights referendum, which were really youth-led positive changes,” Harvey recalls. “And so, yeah, so yeah. “So it just felt like Ireland was on the cusp of something, and there was a lot going on in terms of the weird folk music.”

Lovén explains the connections and intersections music develops with politics this way: “This kind of music often comes when it’s in protest, or when it mixes with society. I am interested in when you find music that means more to people than just being music, when it’s entangled in the history, and what is actually happening. I think music is the most interesting when you can see and read history and other stories through the music, and it’s not all about the music itself.”

Fonko was about people making modern dance music while using traditional rhythms and “starting discussions about colonization and liberation,” the filmmaker explains. “The similarity to Celtic Utopia is the feeling that music actually means something, that musicians are able to speak out about social injustices without being ridiculed.”

A lot of the folk musicians featured in the doc take on existing policies in Ireland with a call for more liberal attitudes. Harvey says in a director’s note that his generation has been subject to “humiliation,” for example, and cites the post-colonial society’s weight of heritage.

“I feel I need to caveat that humiliation, because since independence in Ireland, there’s never been a left-wing government,” the director highlights. “Basically, the Irish succeeded in getting the British out of the south of the country and then just handed over power to an incredibly repressive branch of the Catholic Church. And then that basically just held until the ‘90s, and then after the economic boom, the financial crash came. And you had to quickly realize that all of this supposed wealth that was in Ireland was just all fake. It was just built in this fake housing boom.”

That meant many in his generation looked to leave the country amid high unemployment, a lack of housing, and a sense of a missing vision for the future. “It was maybe only when I moved to Sweden that I realized that your future as a young person doesn’t have to be like this – get out and leave,” he shares. “In Sweden, when people finish high school, their parents give them blankets and pillows and stuff as gifts, because they’re expected to get an apartment.”

The founders of the musical group The Mary Wallopers didn’t leave Ireland, and the filmmakers visited them in their home/pub in Dundalk. “We set the cameras going, and they talked to us for two hours, and just riddled us with these amazing stories and jokes,” says Harvey.

How did the filmmaker duo define Irish folk music, given that the movie also features Young Spencer, who is based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. “This was an ongoing discussion throughout the film, although we knew from the start that we would want to portray Ireland as a whole,” Lovén tells THR. “We didn’t want to use the border. But depending on what you say and how, it means different things for how you position yourself in the whole conflict language. But the basic idea was that we didn’t want to show the border. We know the border is there. We know there’s conflict in the north, but we just want to talk Irish music, because it’s so connected.”

Harvey highlights how feelings of identity have been changing across parts of the island. “Young Spencer is a loyalist rapper, and he considers himself Irish and from Belfast and a citizen of the U.K., but also a proud Irish person,” he points out. “The other day, we were taking still photos of Young Spencer for press images. He was wearing a Union Jack and all this Young Spencer Protestant stuff. We walked onto the Falls Road, the Catholic side of Belfast. And he looked at a mural of Bobby Sands, one of the famous Irish hunger strikers who died in protest under [U.K. Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher, and he touched his heart and said, ‘He’s a fucking legend.’ I was just really moved by that.”

Speaking of Northern Ireland, if you wonder about Kneecap, the film crew did meet them, too. “We did run into them when we were filming in Belfast at their local pub,” Lovén recalls. “But we didn’t film them.”

Adds Harvey: “We had just met Young Spencer for the first time, and they loved that we were filming with him. Young Spencer actually supported Kneecap when they played in Belfast at Christmas. We did think about filming with them at the start, but then, they were making their own film, and there’s a lot more information out there about them already. Our film became a bit more about this whole scene that leads to things.”

Some of the musical talents in the movie, such as the young Naoise Mac Cathmhaoil, the directors didn’t know at first. “We went to this singing festival in Donegal, and he sang, and the whole place just stopped,” Harvey recalls. “So, obviously, I was like: ‘Can we film with you’?”

One of the themes that keeps coming up in the film is that of Ireland as a post-colonial society. “You usually don’t look at Ireland as a former colony, because it’s a white Western European society,” says Lovén. “And so, you’re kind of blind to all the problems that stem from colonization, which you’d immediately see if it were Ghana or Senegal.”

The musical journey also introduces audiences to a range of offbeat Irish trivia fit for a pub quiz or TV game show. For example, you can find out about Barack Obama Plaza, a highway service station near Moneygall. A story about a controversial bronze statue depicting a Púca, a mythical Irish creature that can transform into a horse, may also make you raise your eyebrows.

Given the moving music, personality and outspokenness of the creatives featured in Celtic Utopia, the director duo behind it is considering possible follow-up projects with some of them. “There’s a lot of potential to make a film about people from this film,” Harvey says. “We’ve talked to a few of different musicians about doing something together with them. I work a lot around migration as well in films that I make myself. And I feel this film in a way is related, it’s sort of a parallel track to films about migration since we are looking at national culture, a progressive, inclusive national culture.”

Adds Lovén: “They are very much related. Dennis made a beautiful short film called The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp. You could watch it in parallel with Celtic Utopia. It’s the same place, but happening in parallel, and it’s very much related.”

Not everyone can sing or play instruments like the performers speaking out in Celtic Utopia, but the filmmakers strongly feel that the music will speak to many, not just music experts.

“Obviously, the musicians are amazing in this film,”says Harvey. “But music is for everyone, and everyone can sing or make music, even if not on that level. Everyone can dance. There’s just something really human about that.”