Kristina: Historicizing a Becoming in Two Short Minutes

A portrait of Kristina O’Hara McCafferty, Kristina is a concise 2-minute documentary by Mac Premo that delivers a sense of Irish women’s history, hinged on Eavan Boland’s Mother Ireland. The film uses an alternating rhythm of frenetic energy and calm, while the poem, epic in scale, is recited on the voiceover. 

Using the poem (recited by O’Hara-McCafferty) as the hinge upon which the narrative is woven, the documentary shows the boxer as a woman moving beyond motherhood into a realm formerly occupied exclusively by men like her husband and father. Between her little son and the rows upon rows of photos of her male predecessors, O’Hara-McCafferty stands as a mediator, the face of change that will extend from her to her son as he grows into a person in the world. 

Belfast itself is given almost as much attention as the film’s subject. In fact, she is framed as part of the land (and the poem furthers this idea while also complicating it).  One of the very first images in the film, entangled with split-second shots of O’Hara-McCafferty, shows the instantly recognisable streets and houses. It is a beautiful sight made gritty as the context for O’Hara-McCafferty the boxer.  Having made Mother Ireland, a poem of becoming, as the centrepiece in Kristina not only enables it to convey immediate meanings with ease but places O’Hara-McCafferty among a long line of Irish women who have gone beyond the mould initially offered to them. 

In the background, the score is a bracing, triumphant sound blended with commentary tracks. The two combine with the poem to create a cacophony of energy that seems to speak of the city itself, and the place Kristina O’Hara-McCafferty is carving for herself in it. 

Watch Kristina Short Film