Dara Waldron

Nelijalkainen opas paranemisen polulla Irlannin vehreälle maaseudulle sijoittuva Paimenkoira Oscar: tarina ystävyydestä on Dara Waldronin muistelmateos surusta, paranemisesta sekä ihmisen ja koiran välisestä lujasta siteestä. Elokuvatieteilijä Waldron menettää isänsä auto-onnettomuudessa. Yllättävä kuolema on sokki ja siitä seurannut suru ei ota hellittääkseen. Saadakseen muuta ajateltavaa Waldron päättää hankkia koiran, ja erään opiskelijansa vinkistä hän tutustuu hylätyllä maatilalla asustelevaan salaperäiseen bordercollieen Oscariin. Oscar on luonteeltaan perinteinen irlantilainen paimenkoira, joka vaistojaan seuraten lähtee usein omille teilleen, mutta palaa kuitenkin aina takaisin Waldronin luo. He aloittavat päivittäiset kävelyt sumuisissa metsissä ja karuilla rinteillä ja vähä vähältä side heidän välillään vahvistuu. Jokainen askel tulee osaksi toipumisen, luottamuksen ja ymmärryksen kehitystä. Paimenkoira Oscar: tarina ystävyydestä on ainutlaatuisen sielukas muistelmateos, joka pohtii paikan, muistin ja luonnon merkitystä, menetyksen tunnetta ja ystävyyden lunastavaa voimaa. Dara Waldron asuu vaimonsa ja kahden poikansa kanssa Limerickin kreivikunnassa Irlannissa ja opettaa Limerickin taide- ja muotoilukoulussa Shannonin teknillisessä yliopistossa. Paimenkoira Oscar: tarina ystävyydestä on hänen ensimmäinen suomennettu kirjansa.

Grieving his father’s sudden passing, a film scholar and father of two boys finds solace in the picturesque idyll of Ireland's East Clare region, where he discovers and adopts an enigmatic border collie from an abandoned farm. What is the essence of a sheepdog? As much a part of Ireland’s traditional and rural life as the countryside itself, working animals are known to be incredibly smart, loyal, with distinct personalities. Dara Waldron’s memoir about the wandering border collie he adopted the year after his father died is both an animal rescue story and a deep reflection on place, with a happy ending. To make a family pet of Oscar, Waldron enacts the daily ritual of walking the rugged hills and rivers of Ireland's woodlands in its intemperate weather—rain, sleet, and snow. Oscar’s instinct, as a sheepdog, is to run away and return to his handler. Testing the limits of Waldron’s tolerance and trying his fragile trust, days with Oscar are defined by the author's attempts to process his grief. Slowly it seeps into his consciousness: Oscar is asking him to understand a creature who lives for another, who will always return. In lyrical description of Ireland's mystical landscape, along with meditations on art, philosophy, and animal rights, this exquisitely wrought memoir about one man and his dog experiencing a symbiotic calling foregrounds the healing terrain of nature, and the true purpose and breadth of life. Illustrated throughout with black and white photo stills in a cinema verité style.

New Nonfiction Film: Art, Poetics and Documentary Theory is the first book to offer a lengthy examination of the relationship between fiction and documentary from the perspective of art and poetics. The premise of the book is to propose a new category of nonfiction film that is distinguished from – as opposed to being conflated with – the documentary film in its multiple historical guises; a premise explored in case-studies of films by distinguished artists and filmmakers (Abbas Kiarostami, Ben Rivers, Chantal Akerman, Ben Russell Pat Collins and Gideon Koppel). The book builds a case for this new category of film, calling it the ‘new nonfiction film,’ and argues, in the process, that this kind of film works to dismantle the old distinctions between fiction and documentary film and therefore the axioms of Film and Cinema Studies as a discipline of study.

New Nonfiction Film: Art, Poetics and Documentary Theory is the first book to offer a lengthy examination of the relationship between fiction and documentary from the perspective of art and poetics. The premise of the book is to propose a new category of nonfiction film that is distinguished from – as opposed to being conflated with – the documentary film in its multiple historical guises; a premise explored in case-studies of films by distinguished artists and filmmakers (Abbas Kiarostami, Ben Rivers, Chantal Akerman, Ben Russell Pat Collins and Gideon Koppel). The book builds a case for this new category of film, calling it the ‘new nonfiction film,’ and argues, in the process, that this kind of film works to dismantle the old distinctions between fiction and documentary film and therefore the axioms of Film and Cinema Studies as a discipline of study.