Matt Hulse, Director, Dummy Jim
FRED’s Matt Micucci meets filmmaker Matt Hulse, who presented his film DUMMY JIM at the 59th Cork Film Festival. He talked about the challenges of representing the deaf mute community in his film, how he came across the figure of James Duthie and also tells us about the key element of the journey in his film – which took him 13 years to complete.
DUMMY JIM is playfully adapted from the little-known journal ‘I Cycled Into The Arctic Circle’ (1951) by profoundly deaf cyclist James Duthie, who one day set off alone on his bicycle from a village in Scotland, bound for Morocco. How did he end up in the Arctic Circle? Led by deaf actor Samuel Dore on an increasingly bizarre 6000 mile journey, this eccentric road movie mixes documentary, fiction and animation. Sadly, Jim was killed on the road in 1965 but this film memorializes a quiet, determined maverick whilst offering an honest insight into his community, with village inhabitants emerging as creative participants and performers.