Brian Keenan wrote an account of his own experience of being kidnapped and held in confinement  – “An Evil Cradling”.

Here he is reading from chapter seven  “Music”, accompanied by animations by Kavaleer productions. The result is a brief but masterful of expression in spoken words and moving pictures of a truly testing human experience and of  how even within that experience he began to find his own means,  resolve strength to endure and transcend.

You tell m:, was the experience shared here the result of broken brain or faulty chemicals? [and how would your brain and chemicals have fared in such circumstances?]  or, as is both more likely and easier to understand, a normal response to abnormal circumstances? perhaps it is as Eleanor Longden describes…”a genius response to living in a crazy world?”

“Deprived of even the most basic human needs, and facing an ever more hopeless situation, his mind began to unhinge. ‘Music’ is by turns harrowing and inspirational. The visions which at once delighted and plagued him are unforgettable. His flights of imagination, so vivid and real to him, he knew to be hallucinations. It wasn’t until the margins between fantasy and reality became too blurred for him to distinguish between, that his despair began to take real hold.

By Kavaleer

‘During his captivity in Beirut Brian Keenan had been moved to a solitary compression chamber, six feet long and four feet wide…

Deprived of even the most basic human needs, and facing an ever more hopeless situation, his mind began to unhinge. ‘Music’ is by turns harrowing and inspirational. The visions which at once delighted and plagued him are unforgettable. His flights of imagination, so vivid and real to him, he knew to be hallucinations. It wasn’t until the margins between fantasy and reality became too blurred for him to distinguish between, that his despair began to take real hold.

Powerfully narrated by Brian Keenan, this animated film packs a visual and verbal punch which ultimately celebrates the ecstatic victory of the human spirit over its confinement. A Kavaleer Production in association with Rocket Animation by Andrew Kavanagh and Keith Foran.

“When I viewed the end product at its premiere in Dublin I was more than pleased – I was transported back to that place where if angels fear to tread, animation can recreate.”
Brian Keenan on Kavaleer’s adaptation of his best selling book An Evil Cradling

“Powerful.”
Ronan Price, Evening Herald

“It is from the outset as masterful an interpretation of the source material as is possible.”
Tara Brady, Film West

http://kavaleer.com/our-work/evil-cradling/