Frank Sweeney Go Ye Afar

Frank Sweeney's new film, Go Ye Afar, follows the journey of an Irish-Nigerian taxi driver on a miraculous voyage through the streets of Dublin and Calabar. Beginning his night shift in Dublin Airport’s taxi holding area, the driver picks up a series of passengers, each entangled in the historic and present day relationships between Ireland and Nigeria. The taxi seems to possess supernatural characteristics, conjuring dreamlike images in the minds of its passengers, and using symbolic sites of connection and departure as portals to move fluidly between distant locations. Central to the film is an enquiry into the politics of movement, and how the freedom, or necessity, of travel is often defined by nationality, class, or economy. Exploring ways that travelling has manifested in religious practice, Go Ye Afar highlights several instances in Christianity, from the Motorists’ Prayer and St. Christopher medals, to evangelisation and the missions.

Amid the crackle and fuzz of the taxi dispatches and news radio stations, it is implied that the film is set in 2010 as the International Monetary Fund visits Dublin, during which the Irish government availed of a significant bailout as a result of its failed economy. The aftermath of the financial crash and the final throes of the Celtic Tiger brought about a wave of emigration and precarity, echoing centuries of Irish exoduses. Taxi and delivery driving became accessible forms of labour as part of the gig economy for many migrant workers. Ireland’s economic recovery model, focusing on Foreign Direct Investment, privatisation and the creation of Free Trade Zones, has been presented to countries in Africa as a successful model of post-colonial economics. As the taxi moves through the nighttime cityscape, one passenger, an Irish priest, recalls his experience as a Catholic missionary during the Nigerian-Biafran War in the 1960s, at a time when many Irish and international NGOs were founded. Sometimes referred to as Ireland’s ‘Spiritual Empire’ it is estimated that, in the early 1900s, 1 in every 120 Irish citizens served as a missionary, many of whom went to Nigeria.

The use of video and audio media by early Irish NGOs was key to building support and solidarity in Ireland with the Biafran independence struggle (known as the first televised famine). In later years, these religious connections brought many Nigerians to Ireland during the economic boom of the late 1990s, with some finding employment as taxi drivers, ultimately converging with a cross-section of Irish society through their work. The film’s dialogue, co-written by Beulah Ezeugo of the Éireann and I archive and Sweeney, is grounded in oral history interviews with Irish-Nigerian taxi drivers and missionaries who lived and worked in both countries. Sweeney also draws from a broad collection of archival footage that includes instructional videos explaining the function of Free Trade Zones, films by Irish Catholic missionaries in Nigeria, a Shell to Sea demonstration with protesters attempting to block a road, as well as murals and memorials depicting the solidarity built by Sister Majella McCarron between Ogoni activists fighting Shell in the Niger Delta and those protesting the corporation in County Mayo.

The car’s circuitous transatlantic journey is enabled by a range of resourceful Nollywood-inspired special effects. Sweeney’s implementation of rear projection is made using footage filmed by Ezeugo with a Nigerian crew driving around Calabar, then projected behind the actors and the car windows in TBG+S’ Studio 1, immediately adjoining the Gallery. The film’s Magical Realist style allows this type of inexplicable scenario to appear as an everyday occurrence. The film’s installation of a floating screen and mini-bus seats connects Sweeney’s research on the cinematic experience of driving to the shared transitory experiences of the movie theatre, bus journey, and church congregation. Go Ye Afar’s combination of historically attentive dialogue, anachronistically elusive timelines and the use of Brechtian distancing with intentionally obvious practical effects, align to prove the transportive nature of cinema.

In Go Ye Afar, Sweeney’s taxi is a literal and metaphorical vehicle with means to move between fiction and documentary, memory and archive, magic and reality. His films explore how broadcast media has been instrumentalised to create imagined communities. For subjects with potentially divisive perspectives, such as religion and cultural identity, opportunities to discuss shared experiences or memories through independent media sources (community radio or television channels, film clubs, art exhibitions) provide alternatives to prevailing narratives outside of mass-media and algorithm-driven platforms. Celebrating the visual slippages of analogue recording and transmission, Sweeney’s work reveals the potential for a broader range of narrative truths and histories.

Frank Sweeney’s recent exhibitions and screenings include ALCINE 53, Madrid (Second Diamond Award) (2024); Anthology Film Archives, New York (2024); Luan Gallery, Athlone (2024); FILMADRID, Madrid (Special Mention) (2024); International Film Festival Rotterdam (Winner Tiger Short Award) (2024); EVA International, Limerick (2023); Sirius Art Centre, Cobh (2023); Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (Best Short Documentary) (2022); CCA-Derry (with Tom O’Dea) (2022); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2021); Transmediale, Berlin (2021); Green on Red Gallery (with Eva Richardson McCrea), Dublin (2019). Frank Sweeney holds a Three Year Membership Studio at TBG+S.

The production of Go Ye Afar is supported by an Arts Council Film Project Award.