Before BARDO premiered at Tribeca 2022, I sat down with director Aisling Conroy to discuss her directorial debut short, BARDO.

Catch BARDO at Tribeca

Watch the trailer below.

Me: Hello, everyone. My name is Austin Belzer of Austin B Media. I'm here with Aisling Conroy, who directed, wrote, edited, animated, did the art direction & a whole bunch, a wearer of many hats for the short film BARDO, and it's an animated short about a woman being shown a simpler life, essentially is the simplest way I can put it. You can catch it at Tribeca at Home starting Wednesday, June 8th at 6 PM. Aisling, thank you so much for joining me.

Aisling: Oh, thanks for having me. Um, just to correct you, as well, Austin, it’s Aisling (pronounced Ash-ling). It’s an Irish name, so…

Me: Apologies. I am. I am terrible with pronunciation like. I was recording an outro for, what I did before this, Body Parts, and I completely messed up the person's last name so…

Aisling: Don't worry at all, it's a Gaelic name. So, there's no way you would have known how to pronounce it. So, cool. Thanks for having me.

Me: Yeah, No problem. So this is a really basic question. I'm sure you're going to get it all throughout the [Tribeca] Festival, but what inspired BARDO?

Aisling: Yeah, I suppose It's a film that's semi-autobiographical, and probably a lot of people have had this experience where they come out of their twenties, and they feel a bit lost and confused after they've been living this hedonistic party lifestyle, but that's just one aspect of it. Bardo was inspired by the Tibetan Book of the dead. The word ‘bardo’ itself means ‘in between’ which alludes to the “in-between” state of mind. And the protagonist herself is in this in-between stage. You know that situation? That stage in our life? But then a real centerpiece of that is her relationship with her grandmother. And again, you know, about 12 years ago I recorded these beautiful conversations with my late grandmother about her growing up in rural Ireland in the Thirties and Forties, and so it was lovely to be able to add that research in there, it has been a real inspiration for me and a big part of the the story of BARDO. It’s a short film drawing on the themes of anxiety in a modern world, self-realization, and ultimately transformation. There is a draw to nature there. So I guess it’s a universal theme. Looking at getting back to nature, something we have all done this past 2 years, during the pandemic, our lives have become more mindful in many ways and people have re-accessed what is important to them. The story was conceived long before COVID though, like 5 years ago, so the theme just happened to coincide with this period by the time we made it. It was a happy accident in that way, in how the film's themes became even more relatable to people.

Me: Yeah, and you know I think it’s kind of interesting. There's kind of been an explosion of animation recently whether it was LAIKA or even last year with the documentary ClayDream. I don't know if you saw that out of Tribeca 2021, or even I guess this would be more appropriate. because it’s about an Irish folktale, but Wolfwalkers. Yeah, love that one. So, how did you decide to make this an animated short?

Aisling: Well, I suppose I studied animation and it has been in my life since I was a kid. So, it just felt like a natural way to tell the story. And I guess the other thing about BARDO is that there's a lot of abstract elements in it that felt like the sensitivity of 2D hand-drawn, and would really articulate those abstract ideas and in terms of the art direction, the color, mood, and the tone of the film. You know, animation really lends itself to this way of storytelling. I always saw it in my head as animation, so it was hard to “unsee” it in any other way.

Me: So yeah, I mean, and I guess the reason I ask is you don't see a lot of hand-drawn animation anymore, and and and it's really just nice to see, it sounds like a weird thing to say, but like in an era where everything is looked so polished in animation. It's nice to see, you know, even in some of the stills, you see, “Oh, I can tell that's drawn by a pencil. I can see the artistry in this.”

Aisling: Yeah, I would have to disagree. I think, you know, in the past 20 years, we've seen a lot of 3D animation, but I definitely think there's been a renaissance with 2D, and you know a lot of people were saying hand-drawn animation is dead, but I really don't think it is, definitely not in Ireland anyway. There are so many amazing 2D animation companies telling great stories and making them with such exceptional artistry. You definitely need another medium for comparison to catapult the underdog forward, if you know what I mean. Maybe that’s what happened with 3D and 2D. I also think with the emergence of craft in art in recent years, more people are going back to analog, more tactile art forms, and I think hand-drawn animation is one of those.

Me: Yeah, if if I had a CD player, I'd still, you know, have my stack of CDs probably higher than…I probably couldn't fit all of them in here quite honestly. That was the one good thing about the iPod. I was like, Okay, let me just scroll through my iPod Nano. I have that with the Blockbuster Video. I was just like, “Man, I missed that!” You know, you're looking at the cover, and you're deciding “You know? Do I wanna see this? Do I want to see RV or do I want to see Next?

Aisling: Yeah totally. I think vinyl is a good example of this too.

Me: So with that, you know, you're wearing a lot of the hats in this film. You're doing a lot of the work and you know I just wanna ask, you know…What was this, I mean, I guess just kind of…Did you just have to train yourself in all these disciplines to..?

Aisling: We had 13 crew on our team. I was the writer and director, and Claire Lennon was our Producer. I co-art directed it with the founder of And Maps And Plans, Alan Holly. And then we had, an amazing team of animators, background artists, a Comp & FX artist, composers, musicians, a sound designer. I did do some animation, backgrounds, storyboarding and editing of course, but it definitely wasn't like a one-woman show at all. It was a film that was made during lockdown and during COVID, so that in itself was very challenging for everybody. And for me as my directorial debut as well. So you know everybody is working remotely, on video calls and messages, working late, living in the uncertainty of the state of the world and all that. So that was a huge learning curve for everyone. All the team were so incredibly talented and you can really see and hear a culmination of everyone’s style and flair, really bringing it to life on screen.

Me: yeah just looking at a few of the stills, they're just beautiful. but yeah, I also think it's kind of interesting, you know. You bring up all this digital stuff, this is premiering digitally. So it's kind of an interesting full-circle thing where it's like we made it digitally, and then it's premiering digitally.

Aisling: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. We were hoping to make it over actually, but just wasn't possible with other project commitments. But yeah, I think that whole you know scene has changed now and people can attend the festival without actually having to be there. Maybe that takes some of the magic away, but it also makes it more accessible to people as well.

Me: Yeah for sure. I mean, I've been doing all my festival coverage from probably this spot for the last 2 years. So it’s been an interesting experience. I had actually hoped to go to Tribeca this year, but it came out too late. But yeah, I just, I hope people go out and see this. There's no reason not to. The Shorts Pass is $25 and you get access to the entire [shorts] program. $150 for the entire [Tribeca] At Home selection, and that's…a bunch of stuff. I think. 80+ things off the top of my head.

Aisling: Yeah, it's really cool. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the short films as well. The premiere is tonight. So, it's really exciting for us. We were funded by Screen Ireland and RTE, which are our national film agency and broadcaster in Ireland. We’re one of three Irish productions in the programme, so we were absolutely delighted to be selected for Tribeca. It is a great privilege to be included at such a historic and important film festival. Bardo has been a real labour of love for all of us involved in the production, and I couldn’t have asked for a better team to help bring my vision for it alive

Me: I’ll make sure to check out the other 2 just let me know what they are, and I'll check them out. I’m sure I'll be busy with all of that. Tonight, I guess. Tomorrow for you, but thank you so much for joining me. I could probably talk forever about this stuff. but until then, I can't wait for people to see it, really.

Aisling: Yeah they’re Aisha by Frank Berry and Lamb by Sinéad O’ Loughlin.

Amazing. Great chatting to you, Austin. Thank you!

For full cast & crew, visit : https://www.andmapsandplans.com/bardo.

Until next time!

Thanks to Thomas Stoneham-Judge from Movies For Reel, Shane Conto, Joseph Davis, David Walters, Ambula Bula, and Matthew Simpson for supporting Austin B Media on Patreon!