Living in an age of polyglobal media dumbdown, it's a quiet joy indeed to come across a television series that involves itself with issues as thoughtful and as heady as language, landscape, culture and growth. Ceol Na Talun (Music Of The Earth, for those of us thieved of the native tongue) is such a series, a 13-parter currently being screened on the increasingly inventive TnaG. It is produced by Peadar O Riada and focuses on life in his homeland of Coolea, way out in the wilds of wind-whipped west Cork. "Basically, it's a time capsule, he explains. It shows what happened in this place from February 1996 to February 1997. It's simply about the way we live life here. "In Coolea, as everywhere in Ireland, that life is changing, shifting and twisting as we enter a new and curious era. Even through the course of the year we spent filming, there was a lot of change around Coolea. A school closed after 134 years, the small creameries were vanishing and the Mass attendance keeps going down. "Ireland is changing from a society of the land to a society of cities and we needed to do this film for future generations, to capture a way of life before it disappears." The series was directed by Peter Carr, whom Peadar met during the filming of the acclaimed music series Bringing It All Back Home. Peter was so taken with Coolea that he has since moved there. Things progressed smoothly throughout the shooting, with the locals proving to be film naturals, unperturbed by the presence of a documentary crew.
`NO-ONE looked at the camera," says Peadar. "They knew us so they trusted us and we made sure that we were as unobtrusive as possible. "With this sort of film, you have to draw a line somewhere, give people their respect." Coolea is an Irish-speaking area and language is very much to the fore in Ceol Na Talun. "We're not precious about the language: it changes all the time. The way it changes and evolves was one of the things we set out to examine." The land, Peadar believes, is a key element in colouring the dialect. "Irish people are tied to the land, there is a bond with it that goes back through the generations. It has a special pull for us and because of this Irish is full of language related to the land, that comes from it." As well as being a time capsule and a mediation on language and land, Ceol Na Talun is a romance, a passionate embrace of place and time and their interactions. "We're surrounded by mountains here and the colours change dramatically with the seasons. At this time of year, there's a sort of beige or offwhite glow and then it goes to a type of yellow and then, with the spring, a dark green. And then you have all the colours of the summer." This natural symphony is captured in the series and is wedded to Peadar's own music, innovative trad that blends the melancholic with the jaunty. Ceol Na Talun, not an inexpensive project, was financed through Section 35, the tax break that sustains much of Ireland's independent film-making. "Section 35 is a wonderful thing," says Peadar. "It gives you that extra space or comfort to make the work you really want to make." Documentaries, he believes, are particularly tricky beasts to mould. "It is a difficult medium - if it wasn't everyone would be at it. But if the quality of your product is good, you'll get through to people and you can keep going." The making of Ceol Na Talun saw its share of sadness. Four days after finishing cutting the series, its editor, Fiachra O hAodha, died of cancer aged 24. His final project is a fitting memorial to his craft and talent.
Ceol Na Talun is on TnaG at 9.30 p.m. on Tuesdays, with subtitles on teletext. A fully subtitled repeat is shown on Sundays at 9.30 p.m.
The Sulan river, running through Coolea. From Ceol Na Talun