It was an honour to chair the post-screening discussion after Sidonie in Japan at the Dublin Film Festival, with star Isabelle Huppert and director Élise Girard. Photo: Simon Lazewski
It was an honour to chair the post-screening discussion after Sidonie in Japan at the Dublin Film Festival, with star Isabelle Huppert and director Élise Girard.
Read MoreI have two offerings for Culture Night this year : A large-scale, one-off print of this image is for sale in the ÍOVA 2nd Annual Photography Exhibition: 6pm Friday 17th Sept 39/40 Arran Quay, till Sunday the 19th September.
I am also delighted to have edited a specially commissioned short film for Decade of Centenaries 1921-2021, made by Susan Mannion, Matthew Gammon and Rory Pierce. You can see it here.
The film can also be viewed at 22 locations along the River Shannon in County Roscommon on Culture night by using a QR code. Information is on the Culture Night website for Roscommon.
I did some publicity shots for “Holding”, a new ITV drama starring Conleth Hill and Siobhan McSweeney, directed by Kathy Burke.
Read MoreI first met conceptual artist Dorothy Cross while training at a dive centre in Connemara. I knew and liked her work, which included many pieces inspired by sea creatures or made with found objects from the sea.
A couple of years later I approached her about making a film and she quite unexpectedly invited me to accompany her on a trip to make work about native shark-callers on New Ireland, a small island off Papua New Guinea that is one of the last true wildernesses left on Earth.
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It was a tough shoot, not least because a capsized canoe ruined one camera and I had to finish the shoot with Dorothy’s one, which she was also using to make work. Eventually a shark was caught, and after a very moving traditional ceremony it was divided among the villagers on the beach.
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Kids in Kontu
You can hear a Lyric fm interview I did about the film here.
I have mixed feelings about the couple of years I spent directing TV commercials early on in my filmmaking career. You can read more about my misgivings in this piece I wrote for the Gloss magazine, which they gave a self-fulfilling prophesy of a title :
You’ll Never Work In This Town Again.
Earlier today a twitter account posted one of my ads for Barry’s Tea, with a question in the caption:
Legendary copywriter Catherine Donnolly wrote the script, and I think the subtext is pretty clear - the daughter's real father is actually her uncle Jack. You can watch the ad here.
Of all the ads I ever made, the ones I’m still proud of are a series for the National Lottery, showing the beneficiaries of Lottery funding. I still like them because they don’t really feel like ads, and travelling around the country to shoot them was an absolute joy.
Since they were made, my feeling about charity have also changed, and can be best summed up by German stand-up comedian Henning Wehn: “We don’t do charity in Germany. We pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments’ responsibilities."
A selection of my films, free to watch online.
Read MoreI found these two reels of film on the street after the Place d’Aligre Market yesterday. My sister also found some treasure there last year, and is turning it into this fascinating project.
The first film I ever saw in a cinema was Laurel & Hardy’s “The Music Box” in the Carlton on O’Connell Street. I wasn’t much more than a baby myself but can still remember the thrill of it, very clearly. This is a different L&H film - does it look familiar? And if anyone has a 9.5 mm single-perforation projector please get in touch, I’d love to see what’s coming out of the garage in the other one…
Rouzbeh Rashidi and Jann Clavadetscher filming on Inis Mór, August 2017.
I’m very proud to have been a producer on Rouzbeh Rashidi's experimental feature film “Phantom Islands” and am very glad to share that it is now available on video on demand to stream or download. The film is like a beautiful, disturbing dream about travelling to the islands of Ireland, and it went on to be screened at over thirty festivals and cinemas all around the world.
To watch Phantom Islands, please visit here: https://bit.ly/2tHeH0w
That’s me on the right, on top of the Black Fort.
Poster by Annie Atkins
Delighted that Deep End Dance is still being screened, almost ten years after we made it - this weekend it will be shown at the ZÜRICH TANZT festival. You can see the film here.
River City People promo video for 'What's Wrong with Dreaming?'
I barely had a clue what I was doing. Talking to Jarlath recently reminded me of this promo, my very first outing as a lighting cameraman. It came out alright, though- I think wobbly cam was a thing back then. I connected with Siobhan again years later, and we got to hang out in Nashville when I was there to shoot a portrait for the So Far book.
Saw a great comment on the Youtube video, which I just had to respond to…
