Lisa Mulcahy, already a prolific director of film drama (including work on ‘The Clinic’) has made a very important social document of three generations of Mulcahy family history in this piece entitled ‘Dan Dan, Dad and Me’, screened at the library during this year’s Rathmines Festival. It has been shown twice before on RTE.

The screening was introduced by a lady from The Irish Film Institute, where it was fished from the archives, and who greatly admired its intelligence and historical significance.

Lisa herself spoke by way of introduction, saying that the origin of the piece was when she decided to follow her father around with a camera when he became obsessed with creating a memorial to his own father, General Risteard Mulcahy, present during the events of the Civil War. The footage she collected was mainly of the excavation of a field in Clonmel, not very interesting!

Nonetheless, Lisa, fuelled by the project and by now emotionally involved, put together this film using RTÉ archives, old Super 8 clips of the family, and interviews with her relations.

The family home, Lissenfield, on Rathmines Road, was the central hub of activity as they grew up. The making of this documentary was, understandably, very emotional.

Her father Richard Mulcahy, the eminent heart surgeon, will long be remembered for his strong views about the dangers of smoking and as an early advocate of preventative medicine. Her three brothers and two sisters also speak with great fondness and wit of growing up in Lissenfield, where their mother held the fort, and where their many cousins came to play. Their maid also spoke, saying that if you hadn’t been to the kitchen at Lissenfield, you hadn’t been to the house at all !

This is a very warm documentary of a different time in Irish social life. I was emotional watching it, struck by nostalgia, and thinking of how close family ties develop over decades against a background of social change, and children are raised in the embrace of their home, despite upheaval and change.

The fashions and trends of the time are seen at family social gatherings, including their grandfather’s state funeral. This intimate family history has covered more than eighty years.

Lisa answered questions to an appreciative audience of all ages afterwards.

She has just completed her first feature film about three unemployed young men, called ‘Situations Vacant’.

Top: The modern houses which stand on the site of the Mulcahy family’s house in Rathmines.
Right: General Risteard Mulcahy (1886–1971), father of the cardiologist Richard Mulcahy.