Film explores life of female Cork revolutionary Mary Jane
A descendant of Corkonian poet and political activist Mary Jane O’Donovan Rossa will visit Ireland next month to screen a film he made about his ancestor’s life.
Williams Rossa Cole, great-grandson of Mary Jane and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, will travel from the USA for the special screening of his film ‘Rebel Wife – The Story of Mary Jane O’Donovan Rossa’ on 17 September at the Thomas MacDonagh Museum in Tipperary.
The screening, which will be held at 7.30pm, will be followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker.
The film portrays the life of Irish revolutionary and Clonakilty native Mary Jane O’Donovan Rossa, exploring her origins as well as her achievements as a poet, author, public speaker, human rights activist, wife, and mother.
Williams Rossa Cole’s film ‘Rebel Rossa’, released in 2015, commemorated the centenary of Irish Fenian leader Jeremiah’s O’Donovan Rossa’s death. However, the filmmaker said that in making his previous film, he learned that Mary Jane’s life was equally as heroic as her husband’s.
Rossa Cole said: “While she was held in esteem inside family narratives, there was hardly anything about her out in the world.
“O’Donovan Rossa was, of course, buried at Glasnevin National Cemetery in Dublin and has monuments and bridges named after him, and other accolades in Ireland. Mary Jane has virtually nothing.
“Outside of her native Clonakilty in West Cork, there is virtually nothing. Mary Jane died just over a year after her husband, to little fanfare, she is buried in a lonely graveyard in Staten Island.”
This, and the under-representation of women’s histories, were Rossa Cole’s motivation to make ‘Rebel Wife – The Story of Mary Jane O’Donovan Rossa’.
With over 20 years’ experience in making documentary films, Rossa Cole’s other credits include ‘Finding Fela’, ‘99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film’, the HBO film ‘Gun Fight’, ‘Giuliani Time’, and ‘Barney’s Wall’.
He has also directed over 70 short videos on authors for Open Road Integrated Media and videos around the world for The Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities initiative.
Rossa Cole graduated from Columbia University and earned a MSc in media and communications at the London School of Economics on a US-UK Fulbright Scholarship. He was a founding contributing editor of The Brooklyn Rail, a monthly publication on arts and politics. In 2024 he published an academic article titled ‘Beyond Deepfakes: Synthetic Moving Imagery and the Future of History’ in the Journal of Information Warfare and is currently researching synthetic imagery and audiovisual archives for a report to be released by American University.
Places for the 17 September screening of ‘Rebel Wife – The Story of Mary Jane O’Donovan Rossa’ are limited and early booking is advised. Tickets are available on eventbrite.com.