Blazing the Trail: The O'Kalems in Ireland (2011)

In 1910 the New York based Kalem Film Company made history by sending its leading filmmakers-director Sidney Olcott and screenwriter and lead actress Gene Gauntier-to County Kerry, to Ireland. While there, Olcott and Gauntier made The Lad from Old Ireland, the first fiction film to be made in Ireland and the first American film made outside the continental U.S. The film was an immediate hit and Olcott and Gauntier returned to Ireland again and again over the next several years, maintaining a base in the town of Beaufort, near Killarney. Known to the public as the "O'Kalems," they produced a series of groundbreaking films-rebel dramas, folk romances, tales of exile and emigration-celebrated for their authentic Irish settings and unrivaled in their use of scenery. BLAZING THE TRAIL tells the story of Olcott and Gauntier's adventures in Ireland: it recounts how they made films without electricity, using locals as actors; how they provoked the condemnation of a local priest and ran afoul of the British authorities. It tells the story of two of the cinema's earliest mavericks, of the people and culture they immortalized on film-and of the emerging Hollywood system that ultimately eclipsed them.