Podcast: Interview with Directors of ‘Father of the Cyborgs’

Film Ireland Podcast

In this Film Ireland podcast, Gemma Creagh talks to David Burke about his film Father of the Cyborgs. Father of the Cyborgs looks at the fascinating life and career of Irish neuroscientist Dr Phil Kennedy. In the late 1990s he made global headlines for implanting several wire electrodes in the brain of a paralysed man and then teaching the locked-in patient to control a computer cursor with his mind. He was compared to Alexander Graham Bell in The Washington Post and became known as ‘The Father of the Cyborgs’. He made the headlines more recently in 2014 when he travelled to South American and had tiny electrodes implanted inside his own brain in order to continue his research. The documentary examines the ethics of self-experimentation and the unintended consequences of a future where technology and human brains combine. The documentary is the directorial debut of David Burke who co-produces with Sean Ó’Cualáin. The pair previously worked together on the IFTA-nominated documentary Crash and Burn. Father of the Cyborgs is in cinemas from 24th September 2021.