I was delighted to be invited back to the Fumbally Exchange, where I worked for several years, to show and discuss two of my short films. They asked for a description of what I was planning to show, so I gave them ‘ a drama about a middle aged woman going out to try to get laid, and the other a kind of love poem to my favourite inspirational place.’
It was fun!
Marina de Van is a very interesting French film director, screenwriter, novelist and actor. She was a great subject to shoot, making it a challenge to pick just one image - I did eventually, and it’s in the “Artists” gallery.
Her new site has just been launched, and offers acting coaching and hypnosis in Paris.
I 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…
Filmmaker Audrey O’Reilly photographed in Paris, May 2019.
If I haven’t shot your author/contributor/profile photo, I’m sorry but you’re just not living your best life. Be more like Audrey.
“One night, Majella O’Donnell brought her son Philly to be shot in both legs”. So begins this week’s episode of An Irishman Abroad, featuring journalist and film-maker Sinead O’Shea telling the story of how she came to make the feature documentary “A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot”.
Director Sinead O’ Shea, photographed in my Dublin studio last year.
Donal Foreman’s “The Image You Missed” is a really interesting essay film about his relationship with his estranged father, Paris-based documentary maker Arthur MacCaig. I saw it last year in The Pompidou Centre, and asked Donal to sit for a portrait the next day. We met at the cafe in the 5th Arrondissement where he last saw his father, who died in 2008.
As I was shooting, a man who looked like Arthur MacCaig passed by in the background.
“The Image You Missed” screens this evening at the Odeon Point Square Cinema in Dublin, as part of the Five Lamps Arts Festival.
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…
Adrian Wojtas, a very talented photographer (and my former assistant) was in Paris for a few days, and we shot some portraits that ended up reminding me of images from Cold War.
