“Citizen Lane” is a drama-documentary that delivers a vivid and compelling portrait of Irish art collector Hugh Lane, one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures in modern Irish history. Directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan (“December Bride”), written by Mark O’Halloran (“Rialto”), and starring Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (“The Infiltrator”) as Hugh Lane, “Citizen Lane” will be available through Verve Pictures on Itunes, Amazon, and Google from April 12th.
Hugh Lane was an especially gifted art dealer and collector, whose ability to read and value a canvas garnered him huge wealth, influence, and celebrity until his untimely death on the Lusitania in 1915. A man of multiple contradictions, he was by turns infuriatingly frugal or extraordinarily generous, a professed nationalist and a knight; a monumental snob and a fearless campaigner for access to the arts. His dream was to create a public Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin to show the work of living artists including his collection of great Impressionist paintings with works by Monet, Renoir, and Manet.
“Citizen Lane” intercuts this compelling drama with fascinating interviews from contemporary contributors including Professors Roy Foster and Paul Rouse and Art Historian Morna O’Neill. They offer a narrative, richly illustrated by the paintings of Lane’s collection, with a twist in the story in the long-running campaign to reclaim for Ireland, Lane’s bequest of 39 great Impressionist paintings, left unwittingly to the National Gallery London.
Director Thaddeus O’Sullivan says of Hugh Lane, “This was a man who was difficult to know, someone who antagonized and infuriated as many as he delighted and intrigued. Altogether a man who was difficult to understand, but just as difficult to avoid (especially those from whom he wanted something). This drama-documentary uses differing techniques to analyze and describe his life and a style that will respect the man himself, creating a film which I hope is full of ideas, exuding energy, a passion for art, and a campaigning desire to return the paintings to their rightful owner – the people of Dublin – and complete Hugh Lane’s vision.”
Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s previous films include two influential experimental films he made in the 70s about the life of the Irish immigrant in “London A Pint of Plain” and “On a Paving Stone Mounted.” During the 1980s, he directed a documentary on the painter Jack B. Yeats and the BAFTA-nominated film, “The Woman Who Married Clark Gable.” In 1991, he directed the feature film “December Bride” (winner of the Jury Prize at the European Film Awards), an adaptation of Sam Hanna Bell’s Northern Irish novel about a scandalous ménage-à-trois set in a rural Presbyterian community in Ulster. O’Sullivan subsequently tackled contemporary urban Ireland in two contrasting films, exploring Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland in the political thriller “Nothing Personal,” and a version of the Michael Cahill story, “Ordinary Decent Criminal.” He directed the HBO biopic “Into the Storm,” for which he improbably cast Brendan Gleeson to play Winston Churchill – giving an Emmy Award-winning performance among the film’s 14 Primetime Emmy nominations.
80 minutes / Cert TBC / Released by Verve Pictures on April 12th.
