Punt is a story of gambling culture, following one man on the slippery slope to rock bottom after a lifetime of small bets, race meetings, online gauntlets, high stakes card games and the unspoken challenges that go with a life of ‘investing’ in chance.
The culture of gambling in Ireland is particularly unique, as a nation we have some of the most slack gambling laws and restrictions in the world.
Small town Ireland, which can be deemed quiet and docile by nature in parts, has been in recent times subliminally infiltrated by Big Gambling Businesses, Ponzi Men and Loan Sharks dangling the possibilities of wealth and fortune in front of a fragile-minded psyche that belongs to an emotionally damaged people as they try and replace the lingering losses of emigration, poverty and lack of faith in church and State with the hope of ‘having a win’. All the while these purveyors of fortune encourage gambling as a normal every day pass time, whilst slowly rupturing the very fabric of family, community, and place.
(Runs until July 14)