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Halfway Home

Halfway Home is a short film tracing a journey from Brighton to Belfast. Combining travel footage, interviews with family members, and archival material, the film reflects on identity, Irishness, and intergenerational connection.

As it moves through trains, ferries, and coaches, the film lingers on the transient spaces that separate places and generations. Structured as a visual diary, it weaves together moments of movement and reflection to explore how identity travels with us — shaped by language, memory, and distance.

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Halfway Home

Halfway Home is a short film I made using travel footage, archival material, and interviews with my mum and grandad. It follows a journey from Brighton to Belfast, exploring ideas of identity, language, and how Irishness is passed across generations. The film is the practical outcome of my dissertation, “Visual Narratives of Irish Identity Across Generations: Moving and Still Imaginations.” Through still and moving image, I reflect on how national identity is shaped by oral history, memory, and visual storytelling. It’s a personal work, rooted in my own experience, but shaped by conversations, distance, and the act of looking while in transit.

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Blurred railway lines seen from a train window, overlaid with a subtitle about changing an Irish accent to be understood.

Still from Halfway Home – Accent and Understanding

A moving-train shot paired with voiceover reflecting on the loss of an Irish accent.
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Blurred image of grass and road markings taken from a moving vehicle.

Roadside Blur

A roadside verge shot from a moving coach – part of the journey's visual rhythm of looking outwards while in transit.
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A small island seen on the horizon under a cloudy sky from the sea.

Ailsa Craig in the Distance

The volcanic island appears during the crossing, a brief landmark between Scotland and Ireland.
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View through a misted ferry window, showing grey sea and sky.

Crossing to Belfast – Ferry Window

A fogged ferry window looking out onto the sea crossing from Scotland to Ireland, one of several liminal travel spaces during the journey.
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Under the Mourne Mountains

At the end of the journey into the north of Ireland, capturing the layered infrastructure and landscape.
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Green foreground with softly lit hills behind, under a pastel sky in County Down.

Morning Light, County Down

A view of the Mournes in golden hour light – part of a recurring motif in the film exploring distance and place.
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Open document showing pages discussing a grandfather’s oral history and personal photos annotated with handwriting.

Dissertation Spread – Oral History and Visual Memory

A spread from the dissertation, showing a page on Pops’ memory, archive, and the performative nature of retelling family history.
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A layout of family photos and political documents from the 1960s–90s titled “Mum’s Photo Archive.”

Mum’s Photo Archive, c.1966–1990

A timeline of collected family photographs and printed ephemera used in the film and dissertation to explore identity, memory, and cultural inheritance.
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A layout of black and white photos, postcards, and school records titled “Pops’ Photo Archive.”

Pops’ Photo Archive, c.1954–1980

Archive material from my grandfather, used as both research and visual reference in shaping intergenerational narrative.
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