Stupid August

• Pádraig Trehy is a filmmaker and lecturer based in Cork, Ireland. Over the course of twenty-five years he has made documentaries, shorts and experimental videos. He has made two features, Shem the Penman Sings Again (2015) an experimental narrative exploring the role of singing in the composition of Joyce's Finnegans Wake; and Stupid August (2025) which received the Irish Arts Council's Authored Works Award and premiered at Cork International Film Festival in November 2025.

Stupid August is the culmination of a lifelong love of silent cinema but particularly with my own personal north star, Charles Chaplin. In a life dedicated to the making, writing, talking and teaching about cinema, Chaplin is the constant that I keep returning to. Chaplin’s ongoing quest, to not simply entertain, but to say something of meaning about the world has also been an inescapable inspiration. The world needs to laugh, but especially at power. This film stems from my personal obsession with the perils of collective amnesia. My story is set in Ireland during the 1960s, a country mired in the past and yet unable or unwilling to see the evils which pervade. Our journey into and out of this mire is centred on the figure of a tramp like clown, who reminds us that the powerful fear being made fun of as much as any form of resistance.