RTE has announced a transmission date of Sunday 20th March at 10.50pm for Stoney Road Films production ‘Wordweaver, The Legend of Benedict Kiely’ a 52-minute arts documentary on banned author Ben Kiely’s 85-year long life and times.
Directed by Roger Hudson and produced by Simon Hudson the programme features contributions from Seamus Heaney, John Montague, Thomas Kilroy, Colum McCann and Val Mulkerns, all long-time friends.
‘Wordweaver’ offers a peep behind the mask of this very public but, in some ways, very private author of ten novels and countless short stories, with friendship and Ben’s eagerness to support and encourage younger writers as just one of its themes. Also explored is his run-in with the Censorship Board which banned three of his early novels.
Filmed and edited to reflect themes of memory and nostalgia, the documentary was previously screened at the Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Festival in 2003 and the Dublin Writers Festival in 2004. It is slated for two literary festivals in the North later this year and early next.
The broadcast coincides with re-publication in paperback of Kiely’s best-known novel “The Captain with the Whiskers” (in bookstores now), following publication of his Collected Stories two years ago, confirming the growing revival of interest in his work.
‘Wordweaver’ is a Stoney Road Films production in association with RTE.
Roger Hudson’s photomontages, many of them like two-dimensional movies, feature strongly in group exhibition “4sum” which opens on 15th March at Droichead Arts Centre, Stockwell Street, Drogheda.
