JJ And The Admiral... The story of two iconic sons of Mayo - JJ O'Hara and Admiral William Brown
Mayo-born Admiral William Brown is worshipped in Argentina, the country he helped create with famous victories over Spanish and Brazilian fleets, usually against overwhelming odds. Over 1,000 streets, 400 statues, several towns and a major city bear his name in his adopted land.
Yet for many years he was little known in his native country - an oversight fellow Foxford native JJ O'Hara set out to rectify in an extraordinary campaign that lasted over a decade and also involved many battles-against-the odds.
In the process JJ transformed his home town of Foxford and Ireland's relationship with Argentina, helped hundreds of children there through charity work and provided an inspirational role model for his many followers who still carry on his work in the community.
Gus O'Hara, chairman of the Admiral Brown Society says: "My late brother JJ and the Timesnap crew put a phenomenal amount of time and work into this documentary over seven years. It was one of the very few things he was involved in left unfinished so we knew it was important to get this extraordinary story out there both as a tribute to JJ and to tell the Brown story on film as he always wanted."
JJ And the Admiral follows JJ on one of his 18 trips to Argentina where he visits the scenes of Brown's battles and journeys hundreds of kilometres up the Parana river to deliver a badly-needed generator to one of dozens of Argentine schools named after Brown.
Writer/producer Bill Tyson spent four months in Buenos Aires researching the film and uncovered material that finally clears up long-running misconceptions about Brown in Ireland.
Tyson says: "If Brown is referred to at all in Ireland, he is called two things: either a pirate/mercenary, or "the founder of the Argentine navy." The first, this documentary proves, is untrue with new evidence uncovered in the Argentine archives. And the latter is an understatement akin to calling Admiral Nelson a 'quite-successful bureaucrat'!"
