MOIRA TIERNEY : SHAHMARAN

Moira Tierney is a filmmaker from Dublin. Her filmography to date consists of 30 short and mid-length films which have screened extensively at institutions, galleries and festivals including the Fondation Cartier and Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Rio Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives in NYC, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and the Film Museum in Moscow. She was commissioned by the Peace III Initiative to make a film on the Irish border in 2010 (Are We There Yet?). She is co-founder of the SOLUS film collective, a Dublin-based group whose mission is to distribute Irish work abroad and to bring new international work to Ireland. Her most recent film, Down Claiborne, was shot in collaboration with the Mardi Gras Indian community in New Orleans and was featured in the IFI's Irish Focus series in 2019. Her films are distributed by the Collectif Jeune Cinéma in Paris.

The Film in a Box consists of an edited series of digital photos, presented in a small box, like a pack of card. The images can be shuffled, recomposed and excerpted at will - or combined with other images - allowing the owner to edit their own version of the "film" enclosed.

#1. SHAHMARAN

Series of 68 photographs

Istanbul and Izmir, Turkey

March 2016

The Shahmaran has female features above the waist and those of a serpent below; she is the queen of the snakes. When the Shahmaran dies, her spirit passes to her daughter. There are different versions of the legend ...

In 2016 I screened programmes of my films in Istanbul and Izmir. The politics were tense and everyone I met was worried about what might come next. The tension manifested itself on the street in different ways; more or less overt. These photos were taken on the street in both cities; they deal with a sense of unease which was palpable at the time.