Duration: 1hr 38mins (2025)
A FILM ABOUT CARE. AND LOVE. AND PATRICK LYDON.
Winner BEST IRISH DOCUMENTARY at DIFF (Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards).
Our very first screening was the Ireland Premiere on Friday 28th February 2025 in Screen 1 in the IFI cinema in Dublin.
In a small wooden house in County Kilkenny, Ireland, Patrick Lydon’s life is ebbing away. Throughout his final year he reflects on an extraordinary life that took him from a budding career in rock journalism in America to trailblazing, with his wife, Gladys, the development in Ireland of the radically inclusive Camphill Movement, sharing life in community with people of diverse needs and abilities. At a time when it couldn’t be more needed, Patrick’s story and his unique lens on the world ask searching questions about ideas of community and inclusion and shine a special light on the otherness of others in our society.
Patrick Lydon is a rare bird. A ‘social artist’, his raw materials are human relations. He is a man of vision, intelligence, principle, discipline, huge energy, passion, courage, humour and, most obvious of all, he’s bursting with love for his fellow man, especially the more vulnerable amongst us. An idealistic intellectual growing up in a high-achieving family in Boston in the 1960s and fuelled by rock ‘n roll, he was destined for a career in rock journalism. By 19 he had reported for the New York Times on The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park and on Woodstock. But a deeper disenchantment with American culture, and then a call to arms in Vietnam, took him instead to Ireland, where his discovery of the Camphill Movement, and with it the love of Gladys Kinghorn, changed his destiny, gave him his vocation and made him the legend he became.
Camphill saw people with and without disability as of equal spiritual integrity, equal in respect and citizenship. They lived a radical form of community life-sharing with particular emphasis on the potential, education, integration and integrity of all, regardless of ability. Their communities were based in largely self- sustaining, organic farms and gardens. Nobody was paid. People coming to live there found their lives enriched. ‘Cared for’, ‘carers’ and ‘service provision’ were alien concepts. All contributed according to ability. Many people spent their entire lives in Camphill communities.
In the fifty years since Patrick met Gladys in Camphill, they have been at the heart of that movement in Ireland, in the establishment of over eighteen residential communities and social initiatives, In 2021, just as Patrick is collaborating with his friend, the filmmaker Éamon Little, on a work to mark Camphill’s fifty years in the Republic of Ireland, he is diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease.
Our feature documentary Born That Way is an unflinching journey to the end of an exemplary life, probing ‘otherness’ in our society and asking searching questions about the future we want to create.
Following our success at DIFF in February 2025 we are looking forward to bringing Patrick Lydon’s story to different festivals around the world.
Director: ÉAMON LITTLE
Producer: ADRIAN McCARTHY
Editor: KEITH WALSH
Co-Producer: ÉAMON LITTLE
Music: RUTH LYDON, MARK DWAN, J.S. CLARK
Camera: KEITH WALSH, ÉAMON LITTLE, MATTHEW KIRRANE
Sound: ÉAMON LITTLE, JOHN BRENNAN, SUSAN BRYANT
Exec Producers: AIDEEN KANE, CRAIG MARTIN, EARL BRIDGES, CHRIS LITTLE
Exec Producers: BOB RUBIN & STÉPHANE SAMUEL
Exec Producers RTÉ: ROGER CHILDS & COLM O’CALLAGHAN
Exec Producer Screen Ireland: GREG MARTIN
Funded by SCREEN IRELAND, RTÉ, COIMISIÚN na MEÁN, S481 Irish Film Tax Credit and FILMMAKERS COLLABORATIVE.
Made in association with Little Vision Films.
© 2025 A Curious Dog Films Production.
For further infomation contact producer Adrian McCarthy – / +353 87 2523482.