Digital Talks: October 2014

Philomena is a 2013 drama film directed by Stephen Frears, based on a powerful true story of a teenager who found herself pregnant in Ireland in 1952, Philomena was sent to the convent of Roscrea to be looked after as a “fallen woman”.

When her baby was only a toddler, he was taken away by the nuns for adoption in America. Philomena has spent the next fifty years in a search for her lost son, when in vain, led by a note-perfect performances from Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, Philomena offers a profoundly affecting drama for adult filmgoers of all ages." -"universal acclaim" but is "torn between contrasting approaches". named it the Best Film of 2013 saying: "It’s profoundly moving and thoroughly mind provoking, and this is film-making at its most refined.
"I agreed to a meeting with a journalist, and then found myself embarking on a five-year quest for a man I had never met before."
An article authored by Martin Sixsmith and published in the Guardian reiterates much of the portrayal of a scheme carried out by Catholic organizations in Ireland that enriched the Church through coerced adoptions and forced labor of unwed mothers.
based on the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by journalist Martin Sixsmith, tells a true story of Philomena Lee's 50-year-long search for her forcibly adopted son, and Sixsmith's efforts to help her find him buried at the convent's cemetery after he died from aids from being gay, and the film was co-produced in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The film has been recognized by several international film awards.

The Washington Times found
Martin Sixsmith is approached at a party by the daughter of Philomena Lee. She suggests that he write a story about her mother, who was forced to give up her infant son Anthony fifty years ago. Although he initially opposes the idea of writing a human interest story, he eventually meets with Philomena and decides to investigate further.
After having sex with a young man at a fair in 1951, Philomena became pregnant and was sent by her father to Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea in Ireland. After giving birth, she was forced to work in the convent laundry, seven days a week, for four years to pay off the cost of her stay. One day she discovered that the nuns had given her son to a couple for adoption, without warning or a chance for Philomena to say goodbye.
Philomena kept her lost son a secret from her family for fifty years, but she visited the convent periodically to try to find him.
The nuns repeatedly told her that they were unable to help her.

So, together they set off for America on a journey's search for her lost son, and this mission would not only reveal the extraordinary story of Philomena’s son, but also create an unexpectedly close bond between them.
The film is a compelling narrative of human love and loss and ultimately celebrates life. It is both funny and sad and concerns two very different people, at different stages of their lives, who help each other and show that there is laughter even in the darkest places. Martin and Philomena begin their search at the convent. The nuns are once again polite but unhelpful, and claim that the adoption records were lost in a fire years earlier, although they later present her with a contract she was forced to sign, forbidding her from contacting her son again, which Martin considers to be too convenient for the Abbey.

Later at a pub, the locals tell Martin that the convent deliberately destroyed the records in a bonfire, and that most of the children were sold for £1,000 each to rich Americans.
Martin's inquiries reach a dead end in Ireland, but he receives a promising lead from the United States and he invites Philomena to accompany him there.    His contacts help him discover that Anthony was adopted by Doc and Marge Hess, who had renamed him Michael. He grew up to be a lawyer and senior official in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, prompting Martin to realize that he had met Michael several years earlier while working in the US.   They also learn that he had died eight years earlier.
Although distraught, Philomena decides that she wants to meet people who knew Michael.    They visit a former colleague of Michael's and discover that Michael was gay and died of AIDS.
They also visit his sister Mary, who was adopted at the same time from the convent, and learn about his lover Pete Olssen.   After repeatedly avoiding Martin's attempts to contact him, Pete agrees to talk to Philomena.    He shows Philomena some videos of his life with Michael.    To Martin and Philomena's surprise, they see footage of Michael, dated shortly before he died, at the convent in Ireland, and Pete explains that Michael had privately wondered about his birth mother all his life, and, in his final months, had traveled to Ireland in an attempt to find her.

Pete informs them that the nuns had told Michael that his mother had abandoned him and that they had lost contact with her. He also reveals that, against his parents' wishes, he'd had Michael buried in the convent's cemetery.
Philomena and Martin go to the convent where, against Philomena's pleas, an irate Martin storms into the quarters and confronts an elderly nun, Sister Hildegarde McNulty, who worked at the convent when Anthony was forcibly adopted.

He accuses her of lying to a dying man about something that was so important to both him and his mother.    Hildegarde is unrepentant, saying that losing her son was Philomena's penance.    Martin demands an apology from Hildegarde, but is astonished when Philomena instead chooses to forgive her.    Anthony Lee was renamed Michael Hess upon adoption, and he had become a leading lawyer in the first Bush administration, and he struggled to hide secrets that would jeopardize his career in the Republican Party and endanger his quest to find his mother.
A gripping expose told with novelistic intrigue,
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6791212-the-lost-child-of-philomena-leePhilomena, and then she asks to see her son's grave, where Martin tells her he has chosen not to publish the story.    Philomena tells him to publish it anyway."
Martin Sixsmith has said that Coogan's portrayal of him shared his "intolerance of injustice in all walks of life", and his admiration for a woman like Philomena who has the strength to rise above this. However, he is less angry than his on-screen version and is an agnostic rather than an atheist.
The book “The Lost Child Of Philomena Lee” was published in 2009.   It acted as a catalyst for thousands of adopted Irish children and their ‘shamed’ mothers to come forward to tell their stories.   Many are still searching for their lost families.

Philomena pulls back the curtain on the role of the Catholic Church in forced adoptions and on the love between a mother and son who endured a lifelong separation.

Ireland's Baby Export Business