Screenwriter Eamon Little introduces That They May Face the Rising Sun, which Little and the film’s director Pat Collins adapted for the screen from John McGahern’s final novel, and which receives its Irish TV premiere on RTÉ One on St. Stephen’s Day – watch That They May Face the Rising Sun now, via RTÉ Player.
At the Cúirt Festival in 2002 I filmed what was likely the first public airing of the opening pages of That They May Face the Rising Sun, published later that year. Jamesie Murphy’s stealthy arrival into the Ruttledges’ house on Easter Sunday, chiding them mildly for not gossiping or going to mass, began a slow, gentle portrait of a remote…