File under: you couldn’t make it up. Bill Stephens was a daring young man from Fairview, who, during the 1950s, set his sights on honing the world’s greatest lion-taming act. To this end, the welder-turned-showband-drummer-turned-daredevil acquired three lions, and began travelling with Ireland’s most prestigious circus families, the Fossetts and the Duffys.
Stephens’ act, Jungle Capers with Bill Stephens and Lovely Partner (his wife, Mai), featured lions and dogs, and culminated with Stephens placing his head between the jaws of a lion. Unhappily, in 1951, one of the lionesses escaped on to the streets of Fairview, where she mauled a young man before being shot by police.
It’s only right and proper that an event that has passed into Dublin folklore is recounted by, well, folk, in a film that was named as Best Irish Documentary by the jury at this year’s Dublin International Film Festival. Locals and members of Stephens’ extended family dust off old newspaper clippings and share their recollections with director Joe Lee. Their community effort is ultimately rewarded with a warm, cathartic get-together.
Joe Lee certainly is a versatile talent: his installation piece Open Season features in the permanent collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and his 2013 dance film The Area (co-directed with choreographer Ríonach Ní Néill) won best film at Amsterdam's Cinedans film festival last year.
Fortune's Wheel is an earthier affair which harks back to the filmmaker's portrait of Dublin's women street traders in Bananas on the Breadboard (2009). Without any showboating or big, loaded questions, the film coalesces into a facsimile of a lost world.
