Born That Way, a film “about care and love and Patrick Lydon, will be screened at Gort Town Hall this Thursday, December 4, and then at Galway Arts Centre, Nuns’ Island, on Sunday, December 7, and Wednesday, December 10, at 8pm nightly.

The film, from Corrandulla-based film-maker Éamon Little, won the Dublin Film Critics’ Circle Award for Best Irish Documentary at this year’s Dublin International Film Festival and received glowing reviews, including five stars from the Irish Times. The paper’s critic Donald Clarke called it ‘essential viewing’ in the ‘Must-see Films’ column in Saturday’s Times.

Born That Way, produced by Curious Dog Films, and edited in Gort by Keith Walsh, is about the life and work of the late Patrick Lydon, an inspirational figure in the worldwide Camphill Movement. This was set up in Scotland in the 1930s by a group of Jews who had fled the Nazis, with the aim of allowing people with special needs to live with dignity.

Today, it has 100 communities in 15 countries worldwide. Here in Ireland, Irish-American Patrick Lydon spearheaded its development.

Born in Massachusetts, Patrick came to Ireland in the early 1970s and with his wife Gladys, helped oversee the establishment of a Camphill Community in County Kilkenny, having been inspired by the first Irish Camphill Community in Wexford. The organisation went on to spread throughout Ireland.

In 2009, Éamon, whose younger brother had joined the Grangemockler community in 1991, made a short film, Camphill – the Essence from Within. Over the years, he developed a friendship with Patrick and Gladys.

In 2021, at a time they were discussing a project to mark Camphill’s 50th anniversary in the Republic, Patrick was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

Éamon realised then that any film he would make would need to be about the life and philosophy of the man who had steered the Camphill Community’s development in Ireland. The result is Born That Way.

Film-maker, screenwriter and radio documentary-maker Éamon who is originally from Limerick City, has lived in Galway since 1991 and Corrandulla since 1994, and cut his teeth in film as a member of the Galway Film Centre in the early 1990s.

His recent work includes adapting John McGahern’s final novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun, for cinema.

Tickets for the screenings in Gort this Thursday are available on the door, at €10, and for Nuns’ Island on Sunday and Wednesday they’re online, at www.galwayartscentre.ie.

Pictured: Patrick Lydon at his Kilkenny home during an interview with Éamon in 2021.