When Paul Taylor attends a film festival he wants to see a passion for filmmaking reflected back at him. The Miller Genuine Draft 15th Dublin Film Festival, is something which has become even more than a passion for this years programme director. Gary Quinn met up with Paul Taylor to see what else drives the man behind the programme of this year’s event.
Paul Taylor sees the development of the Dublin festival lodging somewhere between the London and the Rotterdam Film Festivals. A comfortable reference even for die-hard traditionalists, he wants to take the best of both and apply them to the success of the previous 14 Dublin festivals he has been given the opportunity of building upon. “London is this massive snapshot of production. A lot of quality material but it feels as though it has to cover everything no matter what. There has to be a Spanish presence, there has to be an Iranian presence and so on.” Painting London’s picture on a very broad canvass he sees the Rotterdam festival to be much more cutting edge. “It knows it likes certain films but knows that other festivals will deal with them, so it goes digging for what’s happening on the margins. I’d be seeking to make Dublin somewhere between these two.” Part of the ability to do this comes from their new title sponsor, Miller Genuine Draft. “That may mean that we are glitzier, higher profile than previous years but that’s not a bad thing. It fits in with my own sort of programming and critical tenets.”
“…Its about individual film discoveries…”
Although I caught up with him before the programme is complete he was eager to talk about one of his personal favourites for this years event. Through a combination of luck and hard work he has come up with four Israeli films, which he believes, will make one cornerstone of the festival. “Before this year the number of good Israeli films I’ve watched could be counted on one hand, this year I’ve found four which I’ll argue with anybody are among the best films made anywhere this year.” Standing as screenings alone the festival is clearly proud to exhibit them but Taylor is excited that it also provides a focus to examine where and why these films came along in one year. Reflecting activities which will bring the films beyond individual screenings Taylor hopes to have a roundtable or panel discussion event which will examine the context of Israeli film production. “We’re talking with a range of bodies here about collaborative events, more critically based and educative or that are more aimed at the production community,” he explained.
Many film festivals form their backbone with retrospectives. It’s a good way to establish an identity and then find films to fit. For Paul Taylor, the Dublin festival gives him an opportunity to avoid this and take as fresh an approach as possible. “Its about individual film discoveries, about thinking about film in a different way. I’m much more interested in saying, the films are there, how best can we contextualise them, what comes organically out of what is available?”
“…take a cue from the US experience…”
Paul Taylor previously worked for the British Film Institute. While there he had a lot of opportunity to assess and sometimes advise other film festivals on their direction. “In the 1980’s there was suddenly this plethora of film festivals springing up all over the place. Over time we realised that these were becoming less and less valuable. Most of them were not adding to the sum of film availability.” Back then, one of his responses was his work co-founding the first generically based film festival, Shots in the Dark. It was the first UK festival based on a particular genre, crime, mystery and thriller. “It gave us a very broad canvass to work on, but it also gave us a polemic edge. It meant that we were bringing in material from much wider sources which worked very well for us.”
For Paul Taylor a festival must have some kind of impact on exhibition and distribution. “Even if you’re just encouraging a local distributor to take a chance on something new, its effects have got to be on year round exhibition and distribution,” he said.
One of the major US studio previews which the festival has programmed is Play it to the Bone, directed by Ron Shelton. A personal favourite of Taylor’s, he was delighted to hear recently that Shelton has agreed to attend the festival personally. Taylor believes it is important that we take a cue from the US experience and challenge the idea that everything coming from the big studios is too commercial for a festival here. “In terms of critically looking at movies, someone who has their feet under the table in Hollywood is as likely to come out with something startling or challenging because they’ve earned the chance to be anti-formulaic, as someone that we call the independent sector.” He qualifies this by saying that “a lot of the work that comes out of the independent sector is the formulaic work, just on a lower budget.” He sees it as their calling card before they move onto bigger budget production.
“…It would be patronising to show Irish film just because it is Irish…”
He gives the impression that he wrestles with this issue a lot. He argues that it is not that he is anti-European cinema or the new film sector but that he is pro-quality films, and importantly, that these come from all over the world. “I’m interested in avant-garde cinema. I’m interested in political cinema, but if it comes down to it I’m most interested in classic narrative cinema. I have always had a passion for learning about classic American screenwriting techniques because I think they are so well honed,” he explains. “There is clearly a lot of talent going to waste (in Ireland) because the scripts aren’t there. In discussing this, I’m only talking about finished results. I have a bottom line of what I deem to be quality and I have to stand or fall by that.”
Taylor is very clear on the particular role he plays here. He feels there is little point in displaying work for works sake, “I’m a gatekeeper but it’s quite right that if I reject someone’s feature that they come up and criticise me. I have to make decisions based on the fact that what we are asking people to do is to put down money to watch a picture. It has to be good.” He feels strongly that it would be patronising to show all Irish film just because it is Irish. He does believe that there is an argument for a sidebar market such as at the Rotterdam festival, which shows all that years’ Dutch production to European critics or buyers in parallel with the international festival. “To a certain extent, Galway and Cork already have elements of that about their festivals. It may well be that that function could devolve to one of them. I can’t find an excuse for showing something just because it is from here. I would say the same if I was in Holland or France or the UK. One thing I can’t be accused of is packing the festival with British filmmakers this year,” he says laughing.
The full festival programme will be published in March and the Miller Genuine Draft 15th Dublin Film Festival website will be launched soon.
The festival runs from the 6th-16th April 2000.
